Contagium
by 6hoursgirl
Summary: Eighteen months after the events of Umbra Reverie, Mulder, Scully, and their son are adjusting to family life, but the situation grows complicated when unknown forces threaten the fate of humanity.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I love 'em, but I don't own 'em.

Spoilers: Everything through IWTB and Season 10.

Author's Note: This is the sequel to my first book, _Umbra Reverie_. I'd highly recommend reading that first. :) This book is complete, though I'm posting chapters slowly as they go through a final round of editing. As always, I hope you enjoy, and thanks for reading!

* * *

MARCH 25, 2015, 10:35 P.M.

CDC RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT FACILITY

BALTIMORE, MD

The photo is solid in its pewter frame, a weight in her hands to match the weight on her heart. Her fingers move across the smooth glass pane, the family tucked within, tracing circles around their faces with a soft smile, a reflection of the picture. She sighs, puts the frame back on her desk, an anomaly in the otherwise sterile office. The photo is the only thing in the room that holds warmth.

She pushes away from the desk with a calculated motion, her face a hardened mask as she considers the screen before her. Love and betrayal, the only worlds she's known, and once again they've found her together.

_So this is how it ends, as it always does, as you always knew it would._

She pauses for a second before rising and walking out of the office, greeted by a barren reception area, where the rest of the staff have long since gone home. Her heels clip along the concrete floor as she walks a well-traveled path through narrow halls.

She reaches a heavy locked door at the end of the first-floor wing, then takes a keycard from the lanyard around her neck and swipes it through the security checkpoint. A corridor looms ahead, glowing with an anemic fluorescent light. A silent guard stands at the opposite end, his great gray bulk obstructing an elevator.

"Checking in for a moment," she murmurs, flashing her card. "I have somewhere to be."

He nods and moves aside, dull eyes watching as she presses her hand against a cold glass pane. The handprint analysis confirms her identity, but she can feel the half-breed's eyes follow her long after the doors slide shut. She presses _B3_ to access the underground level, the elevator hums and rumbles into the earth, and the doors open into another long, green-tinged hall.

The fourth door on the right is unlocked with another swipe of her card and a passphrase she knows by heart.

She finds him standing at the one-way mirror overlooking a windowless lab, out of place amongst the white coats in his dark tailored suit. Then again, so is she, in her expensive pencil skirt and black heels. A designer store mannequin lurking underground with the rats.

Her eyes, a deep, murky brown, regard the viewing window with cool detachment. Technicians dressed in thick synthetic coveralls move carefully from station to station. The hum of the air filtration system is the only sound in the otherwise soundproof room.

"Anything new?"

He coughs lightly, but doesn't turn to greet her. "You didn't come all the way down here to ask that, Barbara," he murmurs, a touch of disdain in his voice.

"No," she agrees, unfazed, "but while I'm here, why don't you tell me?"

His expression remains neutral as he watches the technicians at work, hands casually clasped behind his back.

"We've had six successful trials in guinea pigs, rats, and most recently, a sow."

"Human trials?"

"None."

She narrows her eyes, navigating around the lie in an oft-played dance. "That you'll admit to."

His eyes remain dead, but there's a glimmer of recognition, a suggestion. "You know as well as I do, that would be unethical…Barbara. But if there were human trials, they may have been moderately successful."

She snorts, but the pause before her name sets her on edge, as though he knows something he shouldn't.

_I know something too_, she thinks, recalling the report on her desk with a flash of bitter rage.

"They're close. Two months, perhaps three," he says, oblivious to her anger. "That is…provided there are no complications." His lips linger on the word "complications" and he finally turns toward her. Her mouth tightens.

"There will be no complications, Michael. Do you understand me?"

He has the nerve to smile, a sly upward twitch of his lips. The force of her words appears lost on him. He's always enjoyed a challenge, and she is nothing if not a challenge. "I understand perfectly."

She sighs, deliberately softening, reaching for the man with skilled, knowledgable hands. He doesn't react as her fingers brush the sleeve of his suit, as she sidles up to him with oddly placed affection. She lets her gaze match his, watching the work behind the glass.

The white suits are diligent, focused, all of them wearing identical expressions, identical features. Even now, after many years on the project, it's disarming to watch the clones, the half-breeds, move as if they were one unit, one mind.

He doesn't notice as her hand slips into his jacket pocket, finding the thing she seeks with stealthy fingers.

"Do you think they know what they are?" A whisper to cover the rasp of fabric on fabric as she withdraws.

"Yes," he says plainly. "They know. They just don't feel it."

"They don't feel anything."

He makes an unintelligible sound in the back of his throat in neutral agreement.

She presses her lips together, forcing her eyes to stay trained on the glass even as she backs away. "Goodnight, Michael."

He doesn't respond, just continues watching through the window as though in a trance.

_There will be no complications._

She grips the tiny vial in her hand as she makes her way back through the halls, tossing a curt "goodnight" to the guard as she breezes past, eager to escape this place and its secrets.

When she finally emerges, the night air is a welcome reprieve from the recycled atmosphere, the stale white walls. Her heels click a frantic staccato on the pavement as she crosses the parking lot, slowing twice to cast furtive glances over her shoulder, but there's nothing but the breeze, the stars, the hollow light of a single looming lamp.

#

Her family is asleep by the time she returns. The hall light glows dimly, revealing the outlines of plush furniture, gleaming floors; a nice home. A rich home.

She slips off her heels and tiptoes up the stairs in stocking feet, creeping quietly to her daughters' shared bedroom. Amelia's book light is still glowing, half under the covers. Barbara smiles softly, a pang of love welling up as she shuts off the tiny bulb and reaches out to trace a finger along her daughter's pristine cheek. She does the same for her second daughter, Olivia, pressing a gentle fingertip to the girl's lips in a silent kiss.

"Goodnight, loves."

She slips out of their room as quietly as she came. Her own bed is thick, soft, but she cares little for its luxuries. Her husband snores, and she curls against him, resting a hand on his chest. He sighs in his sleep but doesn't wake, turning instinctively toward her warmth, hand rubbing against her hip.

She sleeps.

The news comes four hours later, the phone at her bedside trilling in the quiet morning haven. She jumps for it, instantly awake and pulling on her robe to take the call in the privacy of the hallway. Her husband rouses with a soft, questioning snort, but she's already gone, padding down to the hall to the sewing room.

"Barbara."

"We've had a breach."

She's instantly awake at the words, the unfamiliar edge in Michael's voice. "Where? Which lab?"

"Ours," he says.

"No," she hisses, "No, it's not possible…the containment protocol—"

"There was a failure in the locking mechanism. One of the half-breeds brought it through decontamination before we realized…"

"How?" she demands, her voice rising, but there's no response. "Michael?"

"They don't know yet," he whispers, spitting his consonants like seeds, leaving enough of a delay that she fears he's not telling her everything.

"How bad is it?" She clutches a hand to her neck as if to protect her throat, sagging against the back of the door.

"It's bad," he murmurs, his strangely soothing voice rumbling at her ear. "They're gone."

"Gone?"

"Dead. They're all dead."

Her stomach lurches. She can't bring herself to reply, to acknowledge what he's said, because it can't be true.

_They're all dead._

"You knew this was a possibility when we started the project. So did they. We knew the risks."

Ire gets the better of her. _They didn't have a choice…and now, neither do we._

She swallows, unable to manage more than a strangled sigh, incapable of thought with the alarms ringing in her head. "What about the vaccine?"

"Gone," he says, and at this single syllable he finally shows a crack of remorse in his facade.

"Michael, I—"

"There's concern," he continues flatly, "that the infection has already spread. They want us to keep this quiet, of course, following standard emergency protocol. You understand."

A cold seed plants itself in her consciousness as she realizes the magnitude of his words, the implications.

"Come as soon as you can," he says finally. "There will be a hearing."

Laughter threatens at the back of her throat, and she bites her tongue to keep from shouting. Her hands shake as she closes the call, throwing the phone with all the force she can muster, as though it were the killer, not their work.

_They're all dead._

His words will haunt her for the rest of her life.

_…but how long will that be?_

The thought is ice water in her veins.

_What do I tell them?_ she wonders, fear spiraling in the pit of her stomach. _Steve…the girls…oh, God, what have we done?_

The shaking in her hands becomes more insistent, almost violent, and she darts into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. She bites on her forearm to stop herself from screaming.

_They're all dead. We're all dead._

She stumbles to the sink and gags, but nothing comes up. Her shaking hands struggle with the faucet and she splashes cold water on her face, willing herself to wake. She stares at herself in the mirror, wide-eyed, until she doesn't recognize the shape of her own face, until her reflection holds no meaning.

The seed grows, sprouts, and blooms, a great, black, flowering horror.

_The only thing left…_

She pads downstairs in the early light, grabs the gun from the top of the dining room cabinet, dust from the wood box coating her fingers. The pistol is small but heavy in her hands; her fingers tremble as she checks the chamber.

_Loaded. Like it was waiting._

The bedroom is dark when she returns to find her husband hasn't stirred. The bed is still warm when she climbs in, wrapping herself around him, eliciting a muffled, "Hon?" from his lips.

"It's nothing," she whispers, surprised at how easily she controls the shaking in her voice, even more so that he doesn't notice the cold butt of the weapon now cradled against her stomach. "False alarm."

Maybe, if she can bring herself to believe it, it will be the truth.


	2. Chapter 2

MARCH 25, 2015  
VIRGINIA HIGH SCHOOL  
BRISTOL, VIRGINIA  
1:25 PM

They've been waiting forty minutes within the confines of the office's drab, off-white walls. It's uncomfortable—the cheap carpet, the worn wooden furniture, the smell of chalk and industrial cleaner—but it's the poster of a cat dangling precariously from a tree that sets him off. He stares at it, tilting his head one way and the other, before delivering the verdict.

"If I had to stare at that shit every day, the only thing left hanging would be me," Fox Mulder mutters, casting a sideways glance at his partner.

Dana Scully has come from the hospital, looking every part the doctor minus the white coat. Her turtleneck itches at the collar and she tugs on it, trying to ignore Mulder's attempts to make her laugh. So far the best he's managed is a wry smirk.

She checks her watch for the sixth time, unable to shake the feeling that she's back at the FBI, called on the carpet for breaching protocol, ready to defend her partner's latest flight of fancy. Meanwhile, Mulder has the audacity to look bored.

_Some things never change._

But this isn't the FBI, it's a high school, and today they sit in this tastelessly decorated office not to answer for their actions, but their son's. She has no idea why they've been called in so close to the end of the school year, when William Isaac Scully is arguably one of the school's best students.

"Scully, look," Mulder whispers, pointing at a shelf behind the principal's desk, upon which rests a staged family portrait. "It's Fat Skinner!"

Sure enough, the photo reveals a bald, heavyset man with wire-rimmed glasses who bears a striking resemblance to their former FBI supervisor. She bites the inside of her cheek, barely hiding a smile as she shakes her head.

As if on cue, the principal, looking even more like his slender FBI doppelgänger in person, bursts through the door behind them.

"Sorry I'm late," he mutters gruffly, "faculty meeting ran long. It's no damn wonder these teachers can't get their students to shut up. Alcott himself hasn't taken a breath since 1973."

_The man even talks like Skinner_, she thinks, suppressing a grin at Mulder's told-you-so smirk.

She moves to stand, but the man waves her back into her seat, so she reaches out to shake his warm, pudgy hand over the mess of a desk between them. "It's nice to meet you, Mr…."

"Henderson. Principal Henderson. And you must be…"

"Dana Scully, and this is…Fox…Fox Mulder." The name stumbles off her tongue. They were pardoned years ago, but old habits die hard, and she struggles to recall which cover he's going by, before she remembers he doesn't have one.

"Ahh, William's parents, yes, yes, now I remember."

"Isaac," Mulder interrupts with a trace of polite irritation. "He goes by his middle name."

The man blinks, frowning at his desk. "OK…Isaac, then. Well, I wanted to talk to you about him. He's a very gifted young man."

The partners share the same thought in a single, careful look: _You have no idea._

"Yes, he is," Scully hedges, watching Mulder pick at the lap of his Levis, "but I'm guessing that's not why you called us."

Fat Skinner—_Principal Henderson_, she chides herself, although the former moniker has already stuck—sighs and continues shuffling papers on his desk, until he plucks one from the pile.

"About that. See," he holds up the piece of yellow paper, "this is Isaac's third altercation in as many months."

Scully presses her lips together in a thin line, glancing over at her partner, who suddenly seems more interested in the window scenery than the meeting. "Altercation? I don't follow."

"I've sent home three of these reports. You didn't get them?" He holds up another yellow slip of carbon paper Scully recognizes as a warning notice.

"No, we did get them," Mulder interrupts, and Scully's head pivots on her shoulders so sharply, she can hear the audible crack of a tendon echoing her surprise.

_We did?_

"Then you know Isaac has been caught fighting," continues Fat Skinner.

"I'm aware there were some 'altercations', as you put it. I was told he wasn't the instigator, though," Mulder says mildly. "I'm told the other kid had it coming."

It's clear Fat Skinner didn't expect this. He takes a breath, making a show of shuffling the papers in front of him again.

"What my partner means to say," Scully interrupts through gritted teeth, addressing the principal but not taking her eyes off Mulder, "is that we're happy to talk to him."

"We have a strict non-violence policy at this school. Strict," the principal repeats, enunciating the word slowly, dragging it over multiple syllables as if speaking to a child."We've been a bit…lenient in this situation since Isaac is one of our best and brightest." The man smiles again, an unsympathetic expression that doesn't reach his eyes. "Normally fighting is an immediate detention, but given the state exams are coming up, we were willing to make exceptions in the best interests of the school. But we can't allow this behavior to continue."

"Mr. Henderson," Scully begins, forcing her lips in a tense smile that feels more like a grimace.

"Non-violence," the man interrupts, drawing himself up, folding his hands on the desk. "We don't tolerate fighting at this school. If it happens again, Isaac will face suspension."

Mulder looks ready to crawl out of his seat, but much to Scully's relief, her partner bites his tongue.

"We'll talk to him," Scully repeats tightly, "Is that all?"

He gives a terse nod. "I don't mean to pry, but have there been problems at home? I see here in Isaac's file that you're…divorced? Have you considered counseling for him?"

Scully blinks. _Divorced?_

"We're not divorced," Mulder mutters, "not that it's any of your damn business."

"I just assumed—"

"You assumed what?" Mulder growls.

"No need to get defensive," Fat Skinner continues cooly. "It says here you're not married. It's very common for students with separated families to struggle with behavioral problems, social aggression. Is Isaac's father in the picture?"

Scully glares at the man in disbelief; beside her, Mulder's skin glows with rage. "I wasn't aware the school required a paternity test for admission," he snaps.

"Mulder!" she hisses, turning to the principal. "Isaac is our son," she continues in clipped syllables. "There's been no divorce, no…change in our family arrangement." She realizes she's gripping the armrest so hard her fingers hurt, manicured nails digging into the chipped wood.

_No change_, she thinks, tasting the lie on her tongue, hoping the man doesn't notice the sudden rush of guilty color in her cheeks.

"Oftentimes acting out like this is a symptom of a deeper problem. I thought if there'd been a change recently, it could explain…but clearly I'm wrong about that."

"You're out of line, is what you are," Mulder fires back, loud enough to draw looks from the office assistant outside. He's ready to storm out or add physical assault to the day's to-do list. Scully shoots him a warning look: _Let's make it the former_.

Fat Skinner remains unfazed. "I apologize. But please, talk with Isaac. It's possible he's just going through a stage of social development that's common for teen boys, and this, too, shall pass." He smiles disingenuously, and Scully shares in her partner's unspoken urge to throttle the man.

"Is that everything?" she finishes, cutting off her partner, who looks ready to open his mouth again.

_I'm going to kill him_, she thinks dully as they finish with forced pleasantries, making a hasty exit. She's not sure if she means her partner, or the asshole masquerading as a school principal.

Unfortunately for Mulder, he's the one within reach. She pinches him at the elbow, steering him down the hall.

"What the hell was that?" she hisses, heels clicking angrily on the concrete tile.

Her partner shrugs mildly. "You heard the self-serving prick, Scully."

"You didn't tell me," she wheels on him as they exit the school and into the brisk spring air. "Why didn't you tell me he's been fighting?"

For his part, Mulder looks appropriately sheepish. "He asked me not to."

"He asked you not to? Mulder! He's a fifteen-year-old boy! When he asks you not to tell me something, your first instinct should be to tell me!"

"C'mon," Mulder says, still looking at his shoes. "It's a playground scuffle. Not unusual for a kid his age."

"Mulder, Isaac is anything but 'usual'."

"He didn't hurt anyone, Scully, he was defending himself. Besides, you heard the man; they're not going to do anything to him. His test scores are probably one of the few things keeping this school's funding intact."

"That's not what Fat Skin—I mean, Principal Henderson said," she says. The slip of her tongue gives Mulder an edge, and now he's smirking in the face of her fury.

They find themselves standing beside her car. Mulder's beat-up pick-up is parked next to her more conservative Prius, and he leans against the tailgate, looking the part of a back-country farmer, everything but the hat and the pick in his teeth.

_You'd never know he used to wear Armani_, she thinks, brushing aside a momentary flush of affection, despite her irritation.

"Mulder," she continues, softening, feeling the pull of his quiet indifference even as an angry fire, one born out of fear, burns beneath her breastbone, "we need to be careful here. He needs to be careful. We know what he's capable of. Someone could get hurt."

Mulder ducks his head in assent. "Yeah, I know."

She sighs. "I'll talk to him. I'm good at being the bad cop," she mutters, biting her tongue against an unwelcome flush of resentment.

"No, I'll talk to him," Mulder says, surprising her. "No, really," he continues, smiling a little at her dubious glare, "I'll make sure it doesn't happen again."

"You're sure? I need you to be with me on this, Mulder. He can't get suspended. If the school gets an idea, if he lets it slip—"

"They won't. We're just your normal, happy family. White picket fence, two-point-five kids—hell, I'm considering getting a puppy to top it all off," Mulder smirks.

She snorts in response, but he's earned his smile. "The perfect picture of domestic bliss." There's a pause as she wonders how to ask the question that lingers on the tip of her tongue. "Isaac…he's OK, right? He hasn't said anything to you?"

Mulder considers this. "No. But he doesn't say a lot."

She arches an eyebrow. "What do you two talk about when I'm not around, anyway?"

"Oh, you know. Sports. Chicks. Alien autopsies gone awry. The usual," Mulder replies, but his smile doesn't carry its usual trace of humor.

She debates with herself, wondering if she should press him, but as always, she has to run away in the middle.

"I need to get back," she says finally.

He looks relieved. "Roger that, Doc. I'm going to hang around, wait for Isaac to get out."

"And you'll talk to him, right? He needs to know this is serious, Mulder, no jokes, just—"

"I got it, serious, no jokes. He'll get the picture. Go save the world, Scully."

She wrinkles her nose. "I have a cholecystectomy on my table at four…hardly saving the world."

"Well, save someone the pain of a gallbladder attack, then," he chirps, still leaning against the cab of his rusted Ford. "I'll talk to the brat. Dinner's at 7 if you're home, I'm making grilled cheese."

"Mmm, too much of your cooking and I'll need a cholecystectomy of my own."

"At least you know a good surgeon."

"Bye, Mulder," she finishes, getting into her car with a fleeting smile. She doesn't have the heart to tell him she probably won't make it home for dinner.

#

It's been eighteen months since Isaac came to them, upturning their lives just as suddenly as he had when the E.R. doctor spoke those two impossible words—_you're pregnant_.

Fourteen years later, Skinner dropped him at their doorstep an orphan, everything but the basket and note. Where William had once been a distant memory to be reached for but never grasped in Scully's dreams, now he is solid, tangible; flesh and blood and something otherworldly, but still, she can't seem to touch him.

Scully's car speeds toward Our Lady of Sorrows, the soothing drone of classical music playing the background to her wandering thoughts.

_We're adjusting_, is what she tells people when they ask about the child they didn't legally adopt, the child who was lost and found again. The story changes for everyone.

Her family knows the pretty version, the one without shadows and little green men.

If she believes the gossip, her coworkers think Scully had a mid-life crisis and adopted a wayward teen, and she hasn't bothered to correct them.

Their friends…_well_, she thinks, _we don't need to worry about that._ Friends are difficult to keep when you harbor as many secrets as they do. She has a difficult time keeping the half-truths straight herself.

They may be his biological parents, but the last eighteen months have taught her that blood is not always thicker than water. In Isaac's case, there's no earthly substance that can compare to the life that runs in his veins.

#

"Why'd you have to tell him my name?" Mulder griped to her one day after a particularly abrasive exchange between father and son, the offender holed up in his room after dropping a three-letter F-bomb.

_"Whatever, Fox."_

She'd looked up from her book, brow arched. "I didn't. You forget, he can read minds."

"Thought we had a rule about that," Mulder muttered.

It was one of the first things they'd agreed on after Isaac moved in, carrying little more than his blue backpack full of books, an iPod, and a single picture of his late adoptive family, tragic as a character in a modern-day Dickens novel.

"You don't peek, and we don't give you a reason to peek," Scully had said, hoping to establish a sense of authority over the kid whose supernatural talents put ordinary rules to shame. "We don't keep secrets, but you need to respect our privacy."

The boy had nodded mutely and retreated to the spare bedroom, where he'd stayed for the rest of the day. They'd paced the house, pretended to read, exchanging laden, worried looks.

_What the hell do we do now?_

Scully had lain awake that night, wishing she had an open view into his mind as he did into hers, that she could find a way through the boy's carefully constructed armor.

She'd gone so far as to pick up a copy of the latest self-proclaimed parenting bible, _Raising Your Spirited Teen_. When in doubt, Scully turns to studies, to journals and books, but this one is missing the chapter on "Connecting with your Estranged Child", never mind the ones on "How to Encourage Your Child's Unique Telekinetic Abilities" and "How to Stop Your Telepathic Teen From Reading Your Mind."

Mulder scoffed when she brought it home. She, of all people, should know that the mysteries of the human heart can't be found in the self-help section at Barnes & Noble.

The problem is, Isaac's heart, like the rest of him, is not entirely human.

Now she catches him ferrying his dishes to the sink with his mind. They've lost more china to the kid's experiments in the last year than she can count on two hands.

After one such incident, Mulder had grinned and said, "At least he cleans up after himself."

She'd glared at him, then back at the shards of yet another shattered glass. "The kid could throw a semi-truck the length of a football field by looking at it, but he can't get his socks in the hamper when it's two feet away."

"It's the challenge," Mulder replied, cracking a sunflower seed between his teeth, and she'd had to smile. He's spent a lifetime with incredible talents that turned out to be useless in giving him what he desperately wanted.

He knows what it's like to stare at the stars and feel like he could almost touch them, if only he could reach a little further.

#

Now it's envy that keeps her awake at night. After months of caring for William alone and agonizing over the adoption, it's a personal affront that Isaac is drawn to Mulder rather than her. This is her punishment for giving him up; she can have his presence, but not his love.

He is her son, but he could be anyone's child.

In all other respects—the aloofness, the attitude, the lack of foresight—their son is perfectly normal, according to _Your Spirited Teen_.

Scully flicks off the radio with a snap as she pulls into the hospital's parking lot, sagging back against the seat, eyes closed.

_Normal, except not even remotely normal. The story of my life._

#

Mulder meets Isaac outside the school, catching his attention with a wave. The boy looks up, suspicious and vaguely unhappy at the sight of the rusted truck, Mulder leaning against it. He climbs into the truck's cab, sullen and distant.

"Hey, kid. How'd it go?"

"Alright, I guess," Isaac responds cautiously. There's a pause, both of them wondering who will make the next move.

"So…Scully and I had a little conversation with Principal Henderson. He said you got into another fight."

Isaac frowns into his lap. "I told you, it was self defense."

"Yeah, I believe you. But I'm thinking we need to find another way for you to defend yourself, one that doesn't involve throwing a punch."

"The guy won't leave me alone. Can't help it if he gets in the way of my fist sometimes."

"Isaac…" Mulder's tone is a warning, "just…avoid him."

"I can't! He's been held back twice. He's a giant asshole—"

"Hey, language."

Isaac rolls his eyes, but continues. "He's a giant _jerk_ to everyone, and I'm fresh meat," the boy glowers, sliding lower in his seat.

"So, walk the other way. Ignore him."

"I could've done worse," Isaac murmurs, causing Mulder to shift uneasily in his seat, waiting out an uncomfortable pause. They both know Isaac's fists can't do nearly as much damage as his mind.

"If you do, you bring yourself to his level. It's not a fair fight."

"It's not fair, period."

"Yeah, well, life's not fair," Mulder snaps, ire getting the better of him. Isaac flinches, and Mulder softens his tone. "Look…make it through the rest of the semester and then we'll look at another school. OK?"

Silence. Mulder bites back frustration, whether for his own parental incompetence or Isaac's stony front, he's not sure. He's been on the wrong end of another's fist too many times to count, but he has no sage advice for staying out of trouble; only for finding it.

_Not that the kid would take it if I did_, he thinks with a sigh. _It's like talking to a goddamned brick wall._

An idea presents itself, and the words are out of his mouth before he can fully consider the consequences. "So…I had the guys look up some info for me."

Isaac's head snaps up, eyes wide, the change so sudden and dramatic, Mulder wonders if he imagined the first part of their conversation. "What? What is it?"

"First you have to promise: No more fights. Just walk away. Deal?"

The boy hesitates, but the answer is automatic, plain on his face. "K. No more fights. Promise."

Mulder ducks his head in a slight nod, fingers tapping along the edge of the steering wheel, a nagging voice whispering at the edge of his conscience.

_Don't ask him to make a promise he can't keep, Spooky._

He's good at ignoring that voice.

"The guys recovered the names of some of the scientists who worked on the project…the one you were part of. It's not a complete list, but it's a start. The question is what we do with it."

The boy's eyes shine. "You think we can find them?"

Mulder considers this as he starts the truck. The engine chugs half-heartedly before turning over on the third try, all the while Isaac is staring at him, waiting without mercy. Mulder is again struck at how much the kid reminds him of Scully.

_And what would she say?_

The thought gives him pause. He's never been good at self-restraint in situations like this. Scully was the one to reel him back in, a safety net for the times he went too far.

Isaac is looking to him with a familiar intensity, and Mulder realizes with a certain laughable horror that he's supposed to be the net.

_The blind leading the blind._

"We can," he says after a beat, fiddling with the broken fan knob on the console, "but Isaac…you need to think about this. There could be consequences. And I don't mean a suspension," he narrows his eyes, met with his son's blue flint gaze.

"I know, I get it," the boy spits out, barely able to contain himself. "So what do we do?"

Mulder swallows, reaches for a sunflower seed, watching from the corner of his eye as Isaac does the same. The salt on the shell is sharp with the taste of unease. He's suddenly certain that they're setting in motion a series of events that could change the course of his son's life, for better or worse.

The nagging voice gets louder.

_He'll do it. Whatever it takes, he'll do it._

"Well," he says carefully, "that's up to you, Isaac."

The boy stares at him, considering this, teeth working the seam of his own hard shell. Mulder continues, "Think about it. And…let's not share this with the doc yet, k?"

Isaac raises an eyebrow, a smile teasing at his lips. "You said no secrets."

"You're right, no secrets," he says, shifting the truck into first, wincing as the worn gears grind out in protest. "I'll let her in on it. Just let me be the one to tell her."

The boy shrugs. "K." He pulls a book from his backpack and tugs his headphones on, ending the conversation.

"Glad we had this talk," Mulder mutters. He pulls out of the school parking lot, heading for home, unable to shake the feeling he's just handed a child a loaded gun with the safety off.

_Be careful, Fox. He _is_ the loaded gun._


	3. Chapter 3

MARCH 25, 2015

11:47 PM

Her shift ended at ten, but the roads are slick with rain, so it's late by the time she pulls up their long and winding drive. The house is welcoming and warm, a beacon of light on an otherwise dreary spring night.

She doesn't expect anyone to be awake, but Mulder is sitting on the couch with his feet on the coffee table, watching a B-movie on TV. Her lips curl upward in a half-smile.

_As if we haven't seen enough bad science fiction, and he goes looking at the bottom of the proverbial barrel._

"What's up, Doc?"

"You are, Mulder."

He tips his head over the back of the couch to look at her. "As are you. There's leftovers in the fridge."

"Leftover grilled cheese?" She wrinkles her nose. "Thanks, but I'll pass."

"Suit yourself."

Shrugging off her coat, she settles next to him onto the couch with a tired groan. He mutes the TV.

"Isaac asleep?" she asks.

"Think so. Does he seem off to you?"

The TV flickers in the background, casting shadows. She eases herself against the opposite arm of the couch, resting her feet in his lap, nudging his hand with the tip of her big toe in a not-so-subtle request. He obliges, taking her foot in his palm and rubbing over the arch until her eyelids flutter shut. This is their evening routine, a bit late in coming; it's nearly tomorrow.

"He's always off with me, Mulder," she mutters. "The kid thinks I'm the Wicked Witch of the West."

"What does that make me?" He raises an eyebrow in her direction, focusing on the spot in the center of her heel, the one that makes her squirm with pleasure.

She grins, giggling to herself. "Glinda. No, wait…Toto."

"I always thought of myself more as a flying monkey. You know, with one of those little hats?"

"Mmm," she sighs, smiling at the mental image of her partner in a fez, and stretches her foot against the warmth of his palm. "Did you talk to him?"

Mulder nods. "I did. I'm not sure much of it got through," he admits, thankful for the half-light of the television, which makes it difficult to see the guilty tell in his eyes.

"Well, I'm sure you did better than me."

He arches an eyebrow. "I think you overestimate how much he tells me, Scully. I'm just as much in the dark as you."

"You know more than I do," she says softly, trying and failing to hide the jealousy in her voice.

"Maybe. But only because you're not home," he reminds her.

She peeks from one eye, trying to glimpse his expression, searching for judgment, but he's concentrating on her foot. How long has it been since they've had this kind of quiet, uninterrupted time together? She settles against the faded armrest, trying to enjoy the moment, to not to let his comment prick at her.

"He's been quiet," Mulder continues. "Think something else happened at school…"

She's trying to listen to his words, but her mind keeps repeating the last thing he said—_because you're not home_—and her internal monologue becomes a non-sequitur as she blurts out, "You know, my father wasn't at home, and I still talked to him."

Mulder blinks. "From what you've told me about old Ahab, Scully, you felt the same way when you were Isaac's age."

She frowns, and he begins to massage her other foot as if in apology, unsure if he should push the issue. They're treading on hallowed ground.

"I'm just saying," she sighs, "that if it were you working eighty hour weeks and me staying at home, no one would think anything of it." She jabs her toe into his side to make her point.

"True," he replies, "but after what he's been through, it's a wonder he talks to either of us."

He has a point, but this doesn't make her feel better. If anything, she feels worse. She yanks her feet from his lap, standing with an abrupt huff. Sacred territory defiled, he's crossed one of her invisible trip wires.

"So ask him what happened," she sighs, grabbing the remote and snapping it at the TV, meaning to put this conversation behind them and firmly shut the door.

"I would, but he's been in his room since we got home. He didn't come out for dinner."

She frowns. The kid may be quiet, but his appetite is not. She has yet to figure out where the calories go.

_He burns them off spinning plates in the air. And fighting._

The errant thought only serves to worsen her mood, and Mulder chooses this moment to say exactly the wrong thing.

"Scully, would you stop taking this personally? I'm not saying you're doing a bad job—"

"Exactly what are you trying to say?" she wheels on him, knowing she wouldn't feel this way if there weren't good reason.

_If you were a mother, Dr. Scully, you would understand._

She'd ached and cried over William for years, and now he's here, but he no longer fits in the space he left in her heart. It's still there, alongside a shameful dislike for this stranger who's made her feel like an outsider in her own home.

There have been times in the last few months when she secretly wished Isaac were not their son, because it's almost too hard to love him.

_And that's saying something_, she thinks, _when you consider his other genetic half._

Mulder's lips are pressed taut as wire, but he doesn't respond. He doesn't know what to say, he doesn't have the answer, and this is infuriating. Mulder, the man who has a theory for everything and can't keep his mouth shut, is at a loss for words.

She's halfway up the stairs before he decides to follow, an attempt to breach the gap before it becomes an impasse.

He finds her in the bedroom, already buttoning up her pajamas with jerky, angry motions, brow furrowed at some offending point on the floor. Instinct guides him to her side, to touch her arm, and she stops, leaving the top button undone, a hint of soft, flushed skin peeking out like a gift begging to be unwrapped, a bantam vulnerability in her armor.

"This isn't easy for me, either, Scully."

Her eyes are shiny with hot tears, but she won't let them fall. "I don't expect it to be easy," she says. "I just…"

She leaves the sentiment unfinished, because they both know what she's trying to say. After a moment, she lets him pull her into his arms.

"He'll snap out of it," he says. "This is…it's normal."

"He's anything _but_ normal, Mulder."

"Touché. That's what you get for picking me as the sperm donor," he smirks. "Mulder men are notorious for being aloof and crazy. It's a gift."

She smiles into his chest, sniffs. "I was beginning to think I was the crazy one."

"You are," he sighs, resting his chin on the top of her head, his fingers rubbing soft circles in her hair. "You fell in love with me."


	4. Chapter 4

MARCH 26, 2015

VIRGINIA HIGH SCHOOL

3:20 PM

Isaac is heading for the bus stop when he senses the other boy at his back. Even several yards away, he can feel the kid's consciousness intruding on his own, a dour, murky abyss that makes his teeth ache. He remembers his conversation with Mulder.

_Just walk away._

If only it were so simple. He walks faster, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder.

"Hey, freak."

_Ignore him. Just keep walking._

"Talkin' to you, freak."

A finger jabs into his back, and he's spun roughly around. Buddy Miller closes in, hulking shoulders and bulky arms blocking his way. He looms over Isaac with a familiar predatory scowl that turns the dial on Isaac's pulse.

_Shit._

"Didn't know they let you out of Special Ed without a chaperone, Buddy."

The retort comes easily, a low blow, but a momentary cloud of confusion passes across the boy's face. Isaac would almost feel sorry for him, except the kid hasn't left him alone since…

_…since you started hanging out with Alice_, he thinks, swallowing hard.

"How 'bout I fuck up your face, asshole," Buddy growls, moving up to the smaller boy until they're standing inches apart. Isaac ducks left, intending to run, but Buddy surprises him, grabbing him by the collar, yanking him forward until Isaac can smell the kid's sour breath.

"Not so smart now, are ya?"

"Rocks are smarter than you," Isaac fires back, too filled with rage to regret his foolish tongue. He screws his eyes shut, preparing to take a blow.

_Wouldn't be the first._

"Hey! Hey there!"

A familiar voice calls out, stalling Buddy's punch in mid-air. Mr. Carr, the chemistry teacher, is crossing the parking lot.

"Gonna kill you for this," Buddy hisses, releasing his grip on Isaac's collar with a final shove.

_Not if I kill you first_, Isaac thinks, a dangerous shiver of energy running through him.

"Everything alright here, boys?"

At first, he thinks Buddy will turn on the man—Mr. Carr is thin and wiry, save for a middle-age paunch, and his hair sticks out in unruly tufts from the sides of his balding head.

_Buddy could snap him in two._

A similar thought crosses the other boy's mind and Isaac picks up on it, like a radio catching a murderous signal. Buddy's fists clench and unclench at his side, but he lowers his eyes, mumbling, "S'nothin'."

Mr. Carr looks to Isaac. "That true?"

He sneaks a glance at Buddy, then backs away another step. "Yeah. We're fine."

Mr. Carr isn't buying it, but Isaac can hear the man's thoughts.

_Gotta get home if I'm gonna make the game...not a fucking babysitter...nothing to stop them from tearing each other apart off school grounds...Christ, these kids..._

"Well…you kids go home, then. Stay out of trouble," he grumbles, turning his back.

The man hasn't walked ten feet before Buddy wheels on him, but this time Isaac is ready. His voice is low and calm when he speaks, but his eyes glisten with controlled rancor.

"If you touch me again, you'll regret it."

The larger boy sneers, but his thoughts are uncertain, and Isaac breathes an inner sigh of relief.

_Safe for now._

"Whatever, freak," Buddy spits, backing away.

Isaac stands, rooted in place, breathing hard, cresting the adrenaline rush as he watches the boy lumber out of sight. The rage that follows is so intense, he doesn't think he can contain it. He bites the inside of his cheek hard, and channels his energy into a run, sliding around the corner just in time to see his bus pull away.

_Damnit!_

He glances over his shoulder, toward the school. He could call Mulder to pick him up, but the last thing he wants is another awkward conversation.

_I had the guys look up some info…_

Besides, he has things to think about.

He shoulders his backpack and walks.

#

Isaac used to think his powers were controlled by his emotions, but he's come to fear it's the other way around; that if it weren't for his power's influence, he wouldn't feel anything at all.

His face is hot, still burning from his encounter with the bully. Buddy is little more than a nuisance, an easy target, but Isaac feels like a human grenade with a faulty pin. One wrong move…

He kicks at a stone and sends it skittering across the pavement, a frown creasing his brow.

_It's not a fair fight._

His mind drifts to yesterday's conversation, Mulder's offer of information, the possibility of retribution. His anger resurfaces for the names without faces, the invisible threat. The need is exciting and sickening all at once, a twisted pit of conflict that makes his stomach ache. He wants the faceless men to pay, wants them to feel what it's like to be as broken as him.

_If I found them, I would…I would…_

_What would you do, Isaac?_

The question is sobering, and he kicks at the stone again, this time sending it flying in a wide arc toward the middle of the deserted, unpainted road. He stops in place, staring at the rock until it begins to shiver, then move. It scratches the tar, zigging and zagging wildly, careening in circles until it finally comes to rest at his feet. A faint smile plays on his lips, then disappears as quickly as it came.

_You need to control it, or it will control you._

He tips his face to the sky, memories flashing before his eyes. He shudders, shoulders hunched against some invisible force as a cloud passes over the sun.

_Not a cloud…a great gray expanse…_

_An empty stretch of silent highway. A skyline lit by fire. A deep, aching sadness, the sense that the world has gone gray. An abandoned corridor of green._

_Sickness. Death._

In the last few weeks the dream has become stronger, more ominous, but it's always the same…

Isaac shakes his head and walks faster, tearing his gaze from the heavens and bringing it back to Earth.

_Clouds…they're just clouds._

_Do you really believe that, Isaac?_

He doesn't. He doesn't, because they're waiting for something. The shadows have them; the forces they encountered in the Idaho wilderness never truly took their leave. It's the reason they all have nightmares, but Isaac's are eternal, part of his very DNA.

He hasn't told Mulder or the doc. His biological parents spend enough time worrying about him as it is. He knows because he peeks, despite their rules. He can't help it.

He has rules of his own.

_Don't get close. Don't let them see you. They all disappear eventually._

As much as they love him, they're afraid of him, too. Afraid of what he can do, and what he knows. Mulder is better at hiding it, but Scully's heart is permanently tattooed on her sleeve, her emotions hidden in plain sight beneath a composed exterior.

_It's not just you they're afraid of, Isaac._

He gives the rock a final kick and it disappears into the brush alongside the road. He clenches his hands into fists until his close-cropped nails dig red half-moons into his palms, waiting for the next surge to pass.

_Don't become the monster you were born to be._

What he can't tell them, and what he fears most of all, is that his ability is connected to the hatred that's taken root inside him. That as it grows, so do his powers, and someday neither will be contained.

#

Rather than go home, Isaac takes a detour, veering off the road and over a well-traveled path through the field that abuts Scully's property. One of the few advantages to living in the middle of nowhere is the open space; the vast expanses of land with no one to see for miles, no one else's thoughts vying for his attention.

He's headed toward a section of the woods with which he's grown familiar. The property is said to be abandoned, a dumping ground for junked cars and detritus, but Isaac feels at peace amongst the graveyard of unwanted things.

He takes a seat on a large rock, their usual meeting spot, tossing his pack off to the side, stopping to pull a book from within. The wind ruffles his hair as one page turns into two, turns into twenty, and soon the light is long and golden across the trees.

There's a rustling in the brush behind him, and his head snaps up, instantly alert. Panic scratches at the back of his throat, and he swallows it down. He can't erase the invisible marks left on him after those few days where every movement was a threat, and this is his unwanted gift; to be left waiting in fear.

But the anxiety is temporary. He senses her before he sees her, the slight girl with the short-cropped black hair and deep brown eyes. Her name is Alice.

"Hey, Isaac!" she calls out, smiling in that way she does, her grin half-cocked, bangs falling over her eyes; she absently brushes them away, only to have them settle back across her brow a moment later. She moves with the grace of a young woman, though she's only fifteen, older than Isaac by six months.

At first he'd found her unnerving, the way she'd approached him and walked through his invisible walls as though she was made of something ethereal, not flesh and blood. She talked as if they were already friends, as if he weren't a freak, a self-made outcast. For all his attempts to distance himself, at some point over the course of the last six months, he's come to look forward to her company.

Where he is quiet and invisible, she is talkative and vivacious. Where he is reserved, she is outgoing. His perfect opposite; as much as her presence unnerves him, he's drawn to her like a moth to a flame.

"Hey," he says, hoping she doesn't notice how his voice cracks. "What's up?"

"Nothin'," she chirps amiably. "My brother's being a douchebag again. I heard you got in a fight—man, Isaac, you've gotta stay away from him. He's such a dick." She frowns sympathetically, poking at something on the surface of the rock. She's been on the wrong side of Buddy's ire many times, but not the way Isaac has.

"Yeah," he agrees, wondering how much to reveal. "I can't seem to get out of his way."

"Well…he's an ass. Don't listen to him," she says, abandoning her work on the rock and reaching for a stone, tossing it into the stream where it lands with a delightful _ker-plop_. He smiles and does the same. She's sitting next to him now, so close he can smell her shampoo, a combination of vanilla and strawberries. The proximity makes him light-headed.

"Did you get your English lit test back yet? I failed that so hard."

"Oh?" He tries to keep his tone light, but his heart races. She's so close.

"Yeah. Mrs. Dunn is going to let me retake it next week, I did so bad. But I still don't get it. Ugh, I hate it," she sniffs, wrinkling her nose. "I'd rather dissect another frog than a book any day."

Isaac's stomach flutters uncomfortably, and he swallows fear of a different sort. "I, uhh…I did OK," he says, being modest. "I could…you know…help you sometime. If you wanted," he finishes, cursing the warmth that creeps across his face.

"You would? Wow, yeah. I'd love that," she beams at him, and for a moment he feels lighter than air.

"Cool," he shrugs, but his cheeks give him away, flushed with pink.

They talk about nothing and everything, voices weaving in and out in the warm, fragrant air. She talks about her parents, who are never home, leaving Alice and Buddy to their own devices. Isaac sympathizes, a rare moment of connection. "Yeah, the doc isn't home much, either."

Alice sniffs. "It's funny that you call her 'doc.' My mom would have a shit-fit if I called her 'the accountant' or whatever."

He swallows, mouth suddenly dry, aware he's fumbled. Mulder and Scully are supposed to be his parents; with Alice, he's too comfortable, it's too easy to forget the act.

He frowns. "Yeah, well…I guess we're just weird."

She shifts away from him, thoughtful, and he realizes he's been defensive. He tries again, softening. "I mean…she doesn't mind." He smiles cautiously, and she returns his grin, a furrow smoothed over. Today he's feeling brave. "Wanna know something else weird? They call each other by their last names."

She wrinkles her nose. "Really? Why?"

"They used to work for the FBI or something."

He tacks on the "or something" to make it sound more like a story than the truth. He has her full attention.

"Like, with guns and everything?"

He nods, smug and full of secrets. Her eyes are wide, beautiful orbs, reflecting the light of the water, and he would say anything to see that look on her face again.

"That's so cool," she breathes. "Did your mom ever kill anyone?"

This he doesn't know, but he can guess. "Yeah, I think so. Mul—I mean, my dad, too."

"Whoa."

He tosses another stone into the water, and it slips beneath the silver surface with little more than a ripple. She's eyeing him with wonder, an uncovered mystery.

"Hey, I have an idea."

He slips from the rock, grabbing a stone from the water's edge, sending it skimming across the surface of the stream. "Bet you can't skip more than ten."

"You're on."

They spend the next few minutes gathering stones, watching them bounce along the water as though made of foam and not earth. She wins.

They part company when the sun is kissing the horizon, the last of the daylight dying on the ground. His footsteps are overloud in the growing dark, and he picks up his pace as giddy elation gives way to unease.

_You've been careless. She's too close, Isaac._

He pushes the thought aside, recalling that moment when her face was alight with his secrets.

Rules, after all, are made to be broken.


	5. Chapter 5

MARCH 26, 2015  
6:03 PM  
SCULLY RESIDENCE

Mulder sits with his feet propped on the makeshift desk, staring at the blank white screen with a measured amount of disdain. The book is an inadvertent lie, and like most good lies, he's practiced it well. The shell of a sunflower seed flies from his lips, narrowly missing the trash can in the corner, joining its comrades on the damp, dusty floor.

It's easy to ignore the mess. The shed is more a lean-to than an office, but its dreary, haggard appearance has grown on him. The rough wood walls hold his paper clippings just as well as the den ever did, though the change of scenery hasn't done much for his writing.

_Not that there's any of that happening._

Memory pulls him back to his conversation with Isaac, to the way the boy's face had almost glowed with reverence at the thought of…

_Of what? What does he want?_

But he knows, much as he doesn't want to admit it. When Mulder agreed to do the research, he hadn't thought this far ahead. He just knew he couldn't say no. He knows what it's like to need answers and not know who to turn to.

Email is a welcome distraction, and he opens it for the third time. There's the usual assortment of junk, and something new from Frohicke, Subject: "Thought you might be interested…"

_Nothing like a little paranoia with your procrastination._

He clicks on it, but it's contents are less paranoid than perverted, a lewd video accompanied by a Seussian note: _1:03 is the place to be._

Mulder smirks. At first glance, the video is right up his alley, but he has other things on his mind.

_'Hicky, you perv._

His cursor hovers over the trash icon, debating, before moving over to click _Archive_.

_Maybe later._

He leans back in a stretch, scanning the desk for something else to occupy his frenetic thoughts. A short stack of beige folders lays askance on the plywood surface, profiling cases for the Bureau. Consulting doesn't pay well, but he's never done it for the money. Not a labor of love so much as a labor of necessity.

_Because it's who you are. But you're not ready to admit that, either._

With a final glance at the blank document, the cursor taunting him with its slow, steady blink, he reaches out and snaps open the first folder. The photograph clipped to the top is slick and shiny, in stark contrast to its dark image. The victim is young, male, his body so disfigured as to be rendered almost unrecognizable. Sub-human.

For one horrific moment, all Mulder can see is Isaac's face, matted hair, distended abdomen, and gray-blue skin.

_Jesus. You still know how to pick them, Spooky._

He blinks away the vision, mentally setting himself apart from the crime. It's the third case to cross his makeshift desk in so many weeks, a suspected serial murder. The FBI has few leads, can't discern a pattern from the victims. If it is a serial case, he's a traveler; the bodies have been found in Nevada, Massachusetts, and Washington state. He skims the report's pages.

_Fifteen. Homeless. Body found washed up south of New York City, likely dumped in the Hudson. Puncture marks along the veins suggest drug involvement, organs in an advanced state of decay, water saturation…_

He loses himself in the details, taking notes, occasionally pausing to consult the records again. He opens a new email, and the hour passes in a blur as he writes the profile. The findings are addressed to an anonymous Bureau contact—_some unlucky sap on bullpen duty_, Mulder thinks—and after a final read through, he hits Send.

_Another one for the round file._

He won't receive a response, will probably never see this boy's beaten and bloated face again, but the Bureau has never missed a direct deposit.

_Blood money._

As long as he's on their radar, they're on his. As long as they keep him in cases, he gets a taste of his previous life, a sly finger on their venomous pulse.

He sighs, returning to the victim's photo one last time, studying it, allowing himself a brief moment of empathy; a sorry ending to a sad story, reduced to another unsolved case in a dusty filing cabinet.

Once again, he thinks of Isaac, and an electric finger of nervous energy skims the surface of his back. He's reaching for the sunflower seeds, his anxious companions, when the boy appears out of nowhere, as if summoned by Mulder's thoughts.

"Knock knock."

Mulder instinctively shuts the folder with a flick of his wrist, caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

"Uhh…hey! What's up?"

"Not much," Isaac leans in the doorway, "What are you working on?"

"Just a case," he says, tossing the folder over his shoulder without looking back. It misses the garbage can by a foot, scattering papers across the floor.

Isaac cocks an eyebrow. "FBI stuff?"

Mulder nods, ducks his head. "Yeah."

"Can't talk about it…right?"

He clears his throat uncomfortably. "I could, but I don't want to."

Mulder thinks of the murdered boy's photograph, marveling at the irony of protecting Isaac from this one atrocity in the face of everything else he's been through.

_Because that's what a good parent would do._

He shakes off the thought. He can't think of himself as a father; doing so conjures too many conflicting feelings about his own father.

_Fathers, Fox. Plural._

The boy nods, hands in the pockets of his jeans, scuffing his foot against the blackened shed floor. He looks up, eyeing the walls. It takes Mulder a moment to realize he's reading the clippings he's tacked up, his own personal X-files.

"You don't get out here much," Mulder says, changing the subject.

Isaac shrugs. "What was it like?" he asks, wrinkling his nose at a yellowed newspaper clipping.

"Hmm? Oh…yeah, that was an interesting case," but the words sound false to his own ears.

He surveys the room, trying to see it through Isaac's eyes, but the past is a distorted lens. Most of Mulder's memories have sharp edges. They'd sacrificed so much to uncover the truth, but in some respects, it remains buried. Every day he asks himself if that's for better or worse.

"Weird," Isaac breathes, peering at another clipping. "You must have liked it, working on this stuff."

"I did," Mulder admits, a slight smile crossing his face. "But I wasn't exactly Mr. Popularity."

"You left 'cause they were going to arrest you…right?"

_More like kill me._

Mulder looks at his lap, purses his lips. "Something like that. They made it clear my time was up."

"But you found your sister," Isaac says bluntly, and it takes a moment for Mulder, in all his deductive power, to see where this is going.

"Yeah…yeah, I found Sam. But look at everything we lost," he says, meeting Isaac's gaze after a heavy pause. "I thought the truth meant finding her, but I still couldn't save her." His voice drops, making the connection he couldn't accept when he worked for the Bureau, when he was too young and headstrong to see beyond his own stubborn belief.

"The past is the past, Isaac. You can't change it, no matter how much you want to. Eventually…you gotta move on."

The boy's jaw clenches but he doesn't break eye contact, acknowledging Mulder's underlying message, the answer to the question he hadn't asked.

Mulder's head dips with a sigh, the tension between the two snapping like a fine twig. "But that's not what you wanted to know, was it?"

Isaac shrugs, stony and resolute. "I dunno."

More silence.

"Well, if you ever have questions…or if you just wanted to talk…" Mulder trails off, flinching at his own words.

_Christ, I sound like my mother._

"Yeah," Isaac says, but his disappointment is palpable.

Mulder watches him retreat, slight shoulders bent against the rain, unruly dark hair curling at the base of his neck; the boy who wields all the power in the world, with nowhere to go.

He turns back to his computer, but the book hasn't written itself in his absence. He hesitates for a moment before putting the computer to sleep, then follows Isaac back to the house.

"Hey, kid, wait up. Want to play _Dying Light_?"


	6. Chapter 6

MARCH 26, 2015

7:10 P.M.

SCULLY RESIDENCE

Scully returns from the hospital to find Mulder and Isaac so engrossed in a video game, they don't hear her over the din. She smirks, setting down her bag and coat.

_What passes for bonding between two of the most emotionally isolated creatures known to man. _

"Hey, guys?"

No response. She bites her tongue against a twinge of annoyance.

"Mulder?" His name comes out more harshly than she'd intended, a snap rather than a greeting.

"Hey! Gimme a sec, killing walkers," he mutters. "Get that one, kid, we've almost—"

"Mulder—"

"I said just a minute, we're—ah, shit!" There's blood and gore splashed on the screen, and a groan rises from the couch.

"Language, guys," she mutters.

"Yeah, yeah. The world has been overrun by flesh-eating undead, no thanks to you, Dr. Scully," he gripes, but his tone is light. He tosses the controller on the coffee table.

"Hey," Isaac says, not looking up from the TV. The headphones have already come on, like an invisible wall between them, and Scully sighs. She wonders if she'll ever get used to life with a teenager.

_Or Mulder, for that matter._

She arches one perfect eyebrow at her partner, who shrugs, grimacing as he rises from the couch. His limp is subtle, but years as a practicing physician have given her a sharp eye for broken things.

He places a kiss on her reluctant lips before heading to the freezer. "Frozen pizza?"

She'd hoped for something substantial after a week of cafeteria dinners, but she's too tired to argue. Even the thought of frozen cheese on a cardboard crust makes her stomach burble. "Sure. I'll make a salad."

She washes the lettuce and begins chopping cucumbers as Mulder unwraps the pizza from its plastic womb. "Good day?"

"Glad to be home," she sighs, avoiding the question. "ER duty this week, and something's going around. Every parent is dragging their kid in for the sniffles. If I have to talk one more crazed helicopter mommy off the ledge, they'll have to hook me up to a morphine drip."

She takes a vicious stab at the cucumber in front of her, and Mulder winces in sympathy. He leans against the counter, and she can feel him watching her, taking her in.

She's lost weight. Her eyes are tired, the lines around her mouth more defined. She hasn't been sleeping well. Given the amount of coffee she's drinking—measured in gallons rather than cups—that's not a surprise.

The rest of her colleagues are fresh-faced thirty-somethings, as young and tender as she'd been on her first day out of Quantico. At fifty-one, she should be looking forward to a position of seniority, but the hospital board doesn't trust her after that case with the Fearon boy. She's a wild card, Mulder's understudy until the very end.

_I learned from the best._

"So compassionate," Mulder says, settling on a familiar brand of dry humor. He reaches out, navigating around her to grab a chunk of cucumber, popping it into his mouth. "Remind me not to call you next time I have a cough."

She snorts, but her lips twitch upward in a smile. "I should be so lucky. You're insufferable when you're sick."

"Am not," he growls, snaking his free arm around her waist. She relaxes into the warmth of his body against hers, but her stomach protests the delay. She turns her attention to the tomatoes, flaying them with surgical precision.

"And what did you do today?" she asks, shrugging and tilting her head as his stubbled chin grazes the nape of her neck.

"Oh, y'know. Stuff," he replies, reluctantly unwinding himself from around her. He opens the fridge, gaze roaming the shelves without looking at anything in particular.

She narrows her gaze, interrupting her work and craning her neck to meet his eyes around the refrigerator door. "Stuff?"

"Mmm." He pulls out a bottle of salad dressing, frowning at the print on the back. It's then she realizes he's avoiding the question. She's never seen him look at a nutrition label, certainly not for something paired with salad.

"What kind of stuff?"

He swallows, glancing toward Isaac, then back to the table, making a show of lining up the forks and knives. If her intuition were a siren, it would be deafening.

"Just some research."

She pauses, crossing her arms. "It wouldn't happen to be the kind of research you can't do without assistance from a certain team of Stooges, would it?"

"Hah! Stooges. They'll like that one, Scully."

She sighs. "So it was the Gunmen. What are you getting into, Mulder?"

"I'd tell you…but you'll do that thing."

She rolls her eyes. "What thing?"

"That thing," he says, gesturing to the look on her face. "The thing you're doing right now, where you get all—"

Her eyes go wide, a challenge, and his mouth snaps shut before he takes the thought any further. He takes a deep breath. "I don't want you to get worked up if this turns out to be nothing."

"So there's something I should be worked up about, then?"

He can't lie to her, but the look on his face suggests he wishes he could. "We've been looking into Isaac's history."

She sags a bit, bracing her back against the counter. They'd barely talked about it since Isaac moved in.

_I need you to help me find them. The people who killed my parents._

_His adoptive parents_, she reminds herself, unable to ignore the sting that goes along with the thought.

Mulder approaches, resting his hands on her shoulders tentatively, as if she's a feral animal ready to bite. "He asked me to look, I couldn't say no," he says, lowering his voice. "The guys recovered some names."

"I don't believe this," she says flatly, an angry ache flaring beneath her ribs. "We agreed we wouldn't do anything until he was eighteen. Then he can make his own decisions—"

"But what if it's too late then? Scully, these men are out there now, they're getting away with using people like lab rats. We could—"

"No, Mulder, we couldn't. He's a _child_, he can't get involved in this. It's too dangerous," she whispers, a low hiss against his rumbling monotone, "and you shouldn't encourage it."

"Child or adult, he deserves to know what happened."

"In time. Not now. Please," she whispers, "you know this isn't a good idea. You're letting yourself get carried away, but this isn't a case. If you're bored, finish your book. Paint the house again. I don't care, but don't get him mixed up in this."

He winces. "That's not fair, Scully, this isn't about me."

"Isn't it?" she spits, Irish temper flaring as bright as her gold-red hair.

She blinks, eyes watering, realizing the room has gone cloudy. The whine of the smoke detector is loud enough to make Isaac take off his headphones, sniffing the air, "Is something…burning?"

"The pizza!" Scully cries, brushing past her partner to open the oven, where their dinner lays charred and inedible on the rack. "Fuck."

"Language," Isaac warns, breezily ignoring Scully's glare.

Mulder tosses the phone to her. "Looks like Chinese tonight. You call it in, I'll pick it up."

"I'll come with," Isaac volunteers, grabbing the keys to the truck off the hook beside the door before they can respond. Mulder turns back, ready to ask for her dinner order, but the question dies on his tongue.

Her back is turned, arms locked around her willowy frame, a wall of hurt shimmering like a heat wave between them.

#

Forty minutes later, the three of them sit at the dining table amidst a half-dozen take-out boxes. Mulder pushes his lo mein around on his plate while Scully picks at her chicken, all of it served with a side of uncomfortable silence.

Isaac twirls his chopsticks on the table sans hands, an act that might impress under normal circumstances, but tonight it only serves to enhance their disquiet.

Scully drops her fork into her unfinished dinner with a sigh. "I need to know what you're planning, Mulder."

"I'm not planning anything. I just did some research. Whether we act on it—"

"_Whether_ you act on it?"

There's a heavy pause. "I've left that up to Isaac," he finally replies, voice softening. "We haven't decided anything yet."

_We. Yet._

Scully presses her lips in a thin line. "I think you should leave it alone," she says, struggling to keep her voice steady. "You're too young," she says, directing her gaze to Isaac before turning back to Mulder, "and you're walking a fine line with the law as it is."

"It's my choice," Isaac interjects. "They were my parents, and they died because of these people." His eyes shine in the low light, angry and abused; she knows where he gets his stubborn streak.

"Isaac, you don't know what you're asking. You don't understand. We've been there, it's too dangerous—"

"I do," he shoots back. "I do understand, and it's my choice."

"As long as you live here, you need to respect our rules. I can't let you do this, Isaac, I can't let you risk—"

He jumps up from his chair, his eyes a startling, icy blue, her perfect match. "No! You don't…you can't tell me what to do! You gave me up."

She reels back as if he's slapped her, just as Mulder's hand comes down on the surface of the table. "Hey, that's enough—"

"Go to your room," she whispers, the words smooth and cold on her lips, but Isaac is already there, letting the door slam behind him.

She glares at the door, then at her partner, furious. "You could have backed me up!"

"I did!"

"After it counted," she growls, gathering the take-out boxes and stuffing them into the trash.

"Scully, dammit. I want to be on your side on this," he says, "but I can't blame him. I know what you're afraid of…but I know what he's afraid of, too."

She shakes her head, slamming dishes into the sink. "So dust off that psychology degree and help him deal with it, preferably in a way that doesn't get you both arrested or killed."

"I think you're overreact—"

She wheels on him, eyes glittering with hurt. "Chasing monsters is not the answer this time. Be a goddamned parent, Mulder, and tell him 'no' for once."

Now it's his turn to feel slapped.

She holds his gaze for one second, two, before turning away with a sigh. "I'm going to bed."

Her footsteps echo on the stairs, and he's left standing in the kitchen, the smell of burnt pizza and dashed hopes lingering in the air.


	7. Chapter 7

MARCH 27, 2015, 4:37 A.M.

CDC RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT FACILITY

BALTIMORE, MD

"She's not going to show," Michael Kent murmurs, weary resignation settling in as he addresses the group. "She was the last person to access the lab, and she's carrying the only remaining vaccine. There's a high probability she was infected when she left the building. Systems tells us she was last seen on site at approximately 11:45 p.m."

He can hear the faint sounds of the clean-up crew outside. They'll burn the remains of the lab until the walls are charred and black, his work brought to a halt at the end of a couple of well-placed flame-throwers.

_Not that there will be anyone alive to find the evidence._

They're all infected. The workers, half-breeds, were dead in the less than three hours. Direct exposure to the undiluted virus means it works its magic quickly and mercilessly. The rest will take more time.

_The rest…Barbara…_

She'd brought a visitor home, a virus designed to leave its host a bloodied shell for an even more deadly spawn. A virus she'd helped recreate from the strands of her own sullied DNA, a virus for which they'd been trying to create a vaccine.

_So close. So damn close._

They worked beneath a teetering tower of carefully constructed lies, only to have the last card bring the whole thing toppling down in a bloody mess.

_Now they'll come_, he thinks dully, wondering how long it will take. Two weeks? Three? It's impossible to say. For all their progress, the experiments never made it to term.

The most recent iteration of the vaccine was imperfect, successful but weak. A glance at the lab's empty cold storage unit tells him the last vial is gone.

He'd intended to administer the vaccine to one of the thirty infected patients who don't exist on paper. The boy, Subject 645D was a failure, his body neutralized and disposed of, but Subject 646E, a sixteen-year-old Caucasian female, looks promising.

_Looked promising_, he corrects himself.

Tonight she'll burn with the rest.

He remembers Barbara's hand on his arm the previous night. He'd thought little of it at the time, this odd gesture of affection, but now he knows without doubt who took the only remaining vaccine.

He turns away from the window, ignoring the ache in his throat, the way his eyes burn. She'd been devious, manipulative. She'd betrayed him in their last hours, but she was one of the few who understood him in a way others hadn't been able to.

The affair itself was short-lived, years past, but she'd left a powerful print on what little remains of his heart.

_Not that it matters now._

"Go. Find her. You know what to do."

The drones, impassive and stone-faced, leave without so much as a "yes, sir." He doesn't merit that much respect.

_#_

The drive is eery in the early morning twilight, through slumbering suburban streets. He can still see the stars, cold pinpoints of light in the sky that send chills up the back of his neck.

_That's just the fever._

His house is dark and empty, the perfect place for someone with a soul of equal quality. He tosses his keys on the table next to the door, doesn't bother to remove his jacket or shoes, and makes his way to the study.

The desk drawer slides out on polished runners, smooth as silk. He withdraws a small box from which he plucks the pistol with only a slight tremble in his hand. He places it on the gleaming marble desktop, alongside a pen and a piece of stationery, on which he intends to write his last words.

He sits, blinking owlishly into the dark amongst his scattered papers, case summaries and research. How to sum up a life lived in shadow? And who would be left to read it, even if he could?

He abandons the pen with a disgusted sniff, turning instead to the scotch he keeps in the bottom drawer, foregoing the glass. The bottle is cool against his lips, its contents a fire in his stomach. Soon his lips burn, too, as the world softens around him.

There's a noise from behind, and his heart quickens, hand reaching instinctively for the gun.

"Hello?"

No response. Cruel irony mixes with the whiskey, and his laugh is a harsh bray against the morning silence. He's about to take his own life, but the thought of another doing the same is enough to make him cower in fear.

_How disgustingly human._

"Who's there?" he whispers, a fine sheen of sweat on his brow. There's the soft rasp of another's breath, a shadow. He can still taste the scotch and remnants of a bitter smile on his lips.

"It's me, Michael."

He turns to face her, heart slowing a little at the familiar voice. "Barbara. You came."

She emerges from the shadows, eyes shining, a gun trained to his head. He doesn't bother raising his own.

"You sent them after me."

The tilt of his head makes a sharp silhouette in the light. He takes another swig of scotch. "I did."

"They won't find me here."

"They'll kill your family," he says, playing his last card.

She calls his bluff with a whisper. "Too late for that."

"You wouldn't—"

Her voice is flat and hard as stone. "You underestimated me, Michael. You always did."

He stares at her in disbelief, hand twitching instinctively at his side, but still, he leaves the gun on the desk.

_If she has the vaccine…_

"You took it, didn't you? The missing vial."

She makes a low sound of acknowledgment in her throat, but says nothing.

He licks his lips. "We can share it, Barbara. We can survive this. Together."

"There's only one dose. The formula is weak, half is a waste."

His hand tightens on the gun. "It could give us time, time to make more. We can save ourselves."

Her sneer is vicious, cutting him to the bone. "You're beyond saving, Michael. How much did you stand to make when the deal was done?"

"I don't know what—"

"You self-serving bastard. I saw the files. You were going to sell it and leave the rest of us to rot," she spits.

"So you'll shoot me and keep the vaccine for yourself, then?"

"It's not for me."

He can hear the creak of the bones in her neck as it turns on her shoulders, the telltale whistle in her lungs.

_She's weak, infected. Bide your time._

"What, for your…your _savior_, then? You're blind. There's no stopping this."

"You were the blind one, Michael. You refused to see the big picture. This was so much more than a goddamned government contract."

"The big picture is all I ever saw," he whispers, eyes never leaving her face, slowly bringing the pistol down to his lap. Her eyes follow the gun, but she doesn't move. "The power to cure disease…the power to prolong life."

"All of which means nothing now. But he can…he can save us," she says.

He senses her resistance faltering, hesitation in the quivering V of her chin. "Tell me…how is your faith, Barbara?"

She narrows her eyes in a scowl, but the hand with the gun is trembling slightly.

"Do you pray?" he whispers, a cruel note of hatred ringing in the empty air.

"Shut up."

"Will you ask him for forgiveness?"

"Shut the fuck up!"

He shifts the pistol, aiming for her core, finger massaging the slick metal of the trigger. "Don't be a common fool. We created miracles, but no man can predict the future. This…this _prophecy_ you cling to," he says, drawing back his lips in in a sneer, "you're like a child with a blanket. It's an infantile waste of reason."

Her eyes are wild, flashing, but the barrel of her gun doesn't waver. "You never trusted me, Michael. You never believed, but I have, all along."

"I trusted you, Barbara, but I won't trust the word of a dead man."

He hears the cock of the hammer, feels the sting of sweat on his upper lip, the throb of his pulse beneath the skin of his wrist. He searches her face, but any trace of warmth in her eyes has gone. He tightens his grip on the trigger, ready to fire, but it's too late.

"Neither will I, Michael. Goodbye."

A lone shot rings out in the darkness.


	8. Chapter 8

MARCH 27, 2015

11:36 A.M.

VIRGINIA HIGH SCHOOL

"Hey, asshole!"

Isaac is making his way through the cafeteria with his lunch, scanning the room for an empty table, when he hears Buddy call out.

_Shit._

He stops, clenching his jaw, and presses his eyes shut against the crest of anger that sparks under his skin. He can feel the red plastic tray beginning to liquify under the sudden heat at his fingertips.

"I said hey, asshole! I'm talkin' to you."

He turns on his heel to find Buddy standing in his face. The boy pokes one fat finger roughly into his chest, and Isaac's soup sloshes out of the bowl and onto his shirt. He feels a stirring within, like a power surge, and bites the inside of his cheek to force it back.

"Stay away from my sister, you fuckin' freak."

Isaac swallows, tastes blood. _He knows about Alice. Shit._

"We're going to have a little fun with your face. What do you think about that, freak?"

Others take notice, the rustling of forks against plastic trays quiets, but the cafeteria monitor is nowhere to be seen.

_As usual_, Isaac thinks, gaze shifting back and forth between the boys, three of them this time. He recognizes the others as Mason Perry and Ethan Carroll, and a glance into their minds reveals they're all thinking the same thing.

_…kick his ass…_

Isaac can hold his own in a fistfight, but he's no match for three. There's no other choice.

_Run._

He shoves his lunch tray at the boy, letting it fall to the floor in a mess of milk and soup, and bolts for the cafeteria's back door. He hits the Emergency exit and careens away from the building to the sounds of Buddy barking orders behind him.

Buddy is too clumsy to be fast, but Isaac can hear his friends' staggered breathing at his neck. He hesitates at the curb, almost tripping over himself, and in this critical moment of indecision he feels two beefy hands clamp around his upper arms.

"Let...go! Goddamnit, get...off..."

He struggles, twisting and wheeling, but Mason and Ethan have a strong grip on his shoulders, pinning his arms behind his back. Buddy, red-faced and wild-eyed, is approaching with a smug, murderous sneer.

_He really doesn't care_, Isaac thinks with a kind of horrified wonder. _He's crazy, he'll kill me._

He tries to dodge, hoping to throw the other boys off balance, but his head connects with Buddy's fist, and his ear rings with the force of the blow. The only thing holding him up is Mason and Ethan.

"Not such a tough guy now, huh?"

Isaac struggles and writhes, trying to breathe away the pain in his head so he can think, but Buddy delivers another blow, this time to his stomach, causing him to double over.

"What do you have to say about that, you little pussy? Huh? Huh?"

Isaac gasps, trying to remember how to breathe, before forcing himself to make eye contact."Fuck…you…"

The look of dumb rage on Buddy's face is matched only by Isaac's own. He can feel the energy rising within him, and for all his self-control, this time he's not fully aware of what's happening until it's too late. Rage courses through him, searing hot and all-encompassing. He narrows his watering eyes, feels the heat radiating down his arms, outward into his hands, and suddenly Mason and Ethan are screaming.

Their fingers, wrapped tightly around Isaac's upper arms, are burning. He can hear the popping, sizzling sound of their flesh against his.

Buddy's preparing his third punch, this one meant for Isaac's face, as the other boys fall back, clutching their blistering palms.

Isaac dodges the swing, then pushes his hand straight into the boy's core. It's no more than a light shove, his fingers barely graze the surface of Buddy's meaty chest, but the boy is thrown backward twenty feet, colliding against the side of the brick building with a dull thud.

There's a pregnant pause as Isaac leans on his knees, gritting his teeth, trying to regain control. The other boys stand, gaping at their friend, eyes glazed with shock.

"Let's go!" Ethan's voice is a strangled half-cry, and Mason squeaks an unintelligible agreement before they scatter, scrambling around the building before Isaac can turn on them.

Isaac spits a mixture of blood and bile onto the ground, panting as he stares at Buddy's crumpled body. The boy lets out a low moan, but doesn't stir.

_Serves you right, you crazy fucker._

The feeling of triumph is short-lived. In the rush of the fight, Isaac hadn't noticed the students gathering outside the cafeteria door, a human wall of bewildered disbelief.

_Oh, no…_

Isaac opens his mouth to protest, to defend himself, but the words die on his tongue as a figure emerges from the crowd.

"What the hell is going—oh, Christ."

Principal Henderson kneels over the collapsed boy, shouting for someone to call an ambulance. The cafeteria monitor has reappeared and is already herding the other students back into the school. Isaac can overhear them talking as they shuffle reluctantly in.

"Did you see that?"

"That was crazy!"

"Told you he was a freak."

But Isaac is less concerned with his peers as he is with the man standing over Buddy's groaning body, and what Mulder and Scully will say when they find out.

_I am in so much trouble._

Isaac closes his eyes and counts the seconds, his stomach sinking like a lead weight. When he opens them again, the principal is standing in front of him, grave disappointment written on his round face, his next words tight and controlled.

"Young man…you need to come with me."


	9. Chapter 9

MARCH 27, 2015

2:25 P.M.

SCULLY RESIDENCE

She parks in the driveway, buzzing with caffeine, still brooding over the vestiges of last night's argument. The key isn't out of the ignition before there's a tap at the window, and she squints up at Mulder, his voice muffled through the glass.

"Hey! You're home early."

"Just to shower," Scully says, stepping out of the car. "Then I have to get back. We're swamped."

He narrows his eyes. "You OK?"

She forces a smile. "Everything's fine, we're short-staffed at work."

"I wasn't asking about work," he replies, and she has the decency to flinch. She'd left the house on silent feet in the wee morning hours, sneaking out like an unfaithful lover. It's an effective way to avoid a fight, but Mulder seems intent on dragging her through it. She takes a deep breath, forcing herself to meet his eyes.

"I know. What I said last night…I'm sorry. He just…I don't think he even likes me," she sighs, ducking her head, surprised at how much it hurts to speak the truth aloud.

Mulder's tone is light, but it has the intended effect. "Give him a break. Give yourself a break, while you're at it."

He follows her into the house, wiping his hands on a rag. The front wall of the shed is shiny with a new coat of blue-gray, and he's wearing an old t-shirt that smells of paint thinner and laundry soap. She steals a glance out of the corner of her eye, marveling at his ability to make sweat and smears of Cornflower Dusk look sexy.

_The simple life looks good on him, but it's two sizes too big on me._

"You're working too much, Scully."

Her thoughts must be shining in her eyes.

_Either that, or clairvoyance is catching_.

"Pot, meet kettle, Mulder," she mutters, divesting her briefcase of patient records. She remembers a time when it was not unlike her partner to spend a Saturday, or even an entire weekend, in the basement of the Hoover Building. She remembers this because more often than not, she was there with him.

"We have a lot going on here. And you're still recovering—"

"Mulder, I'm fine," she sighs. "Dr. Chatham pronounced me fit for full-time work months ago, you know that."

He looks down, absently flexing his knee, shifting his weight, and she knows it's not the physical scars he's thinking about. "Fair enough. But last I checked, eighty-plus only counts as full-time when you're working in a sweatshop. I'm not sure this is what your doctor had in mind."

She turns on him with a sigh. "Did you need me for something, Mulder? Because all I want right now is a hot shower and a change of clothes."

"I always need you," he says, chagrined, surprising her when he reaches out and takes her hand, giving it a gentle tug to pull her close. She stiffens, then softens against him. His chin rests on the top of her head, and she presses her nose to his chest, breathing him in. Even at their worst, they've always fit together.

The lack of contact over the last several weeks reminds her of a time when they deliberately avoided it, because of what it would mean for their work. Now she can't believe they waited so long. The tension is damn near unbearable.

As if reading her thoughts, his head tips down, pressing his lips to hers, deepening the kiss until they're both swaying. She wants to lose herself, but the clock is ticking, and his intentions are clear.

_I really wanted that shower…_

"Mulder, I—"

"C'mon, Scully, this is the best part of the fight," he teases, smiling as his nose grazes her cheek, tickles the crevice of her neck, leaving a streak of cornflower blue paint she won't find until she glances in the bathroom mirror at work.

"Mulder…" she sighs, though she can't remember what she was going to say because he's tracing soft, open-mouthed kisses along her collarbone. The shower looks further and further away with each motion of his lips and tongue across her shoulders, the tips of her ears, her mouth.

"We have the place to ourselves," he continues, breath caressing her ear. "Kid won't be home for another hour."

_Ahh._ The silent but omnipresent thorn in their sex life.

He doesn't wait for her response, doesn't need to. She's kissing him back, shower be damned, drawn to him like the moon draws the tides of Earth. Her fingers find the warm, taut skin of his stomach, and all thoughts of propriety are lost as she traces the line of his jeans on his hips.

_More_, she thinks, a single syllable of cohesion amidst a flurry of otherwise unintelligible thoughts, his hands burning lacy patterns along her ribs, undoing buttons, sliding under her shirt. She feels the back of their war-torn couch against her calves as he eases her down, never letting his mouth wander further than her throat as he murmurs something incomprehensible against her neck, a low and delicious hum. Her clothes are too restrictive, rough against her skin, and his growing discomfort is evident as his hips shift restlessly against her upper thigh.

She groans as the pad of his thumb connects with a nipple through the delicate fabric of her bra. He's nuzzling at her neck again, licking and nipping at the soft, sweet-smelling flesh at the back of her ear, and she returns the favor, trailing kisses along his jaw, his face, meeting his lips with a rising urgency.

They're so absorbed in each other that neither one hears the door open, followed by a startled gasp.

"Oh!"

Scully's eyes fly open. Mulder sits up too fast, thrown off balance, and his bad knee slams into the hardwood floor. "Ahhfuck!"

"Yeah, I'd say," Isaac mutters, still standing in the doorway, one hand shading his eyes.

Scully sits up, cheeks flaming, and scrambles for the afghan on the back of the couch in an effort to cover her unbuttoned blouse.

_Thank God he didn't get my bra off._

"Isaac! You weren't supposed to—"

"Got out early," he mutters, staring at the floor with pink cheeks.

"You could've knocked," Mulder chides with more than a twinge of disappointment at the interruption, as well as another familiar feeling—there will be a shower for him later, but it will be cold. Scully turns away, buttoning up, face flushed from arousal and embarrassment.

"Didn't think I had to knock at my own house," the boy grumbles, sliding toward his room, eyes averted. "I'm, uh, gonna go."

Mulder follows. "Hey, not so fast. You said school got out early?"

Isaac tosses his backpack at the bed with surprising force, slamming it against the wall. His voice is flat. "Last period study hall, so I left."

Mulder narrows his eyes. "You don't have a study hall."

No response. Scully comes up behind them, arms folded. "What's going on?"

Isaac sighs, shoulders heaving with frustration, but suddenly Scully's phone trills from within her briefcase. She groans, hissing through her teeth, "Damn…the hospital, hang on…"

But it's not the hospital.

"Hello, is this Dana Scully? William's mother?"

_Fat Skinner._

She ruffles at the man's stubborn insistence on using Isaac's first name, looking over her shoulder at the subject in question. He's staring back at her with an expression of pure dismay.

_Like an animal caught in a trap_, she thinks, acid swirling in the pit of her stomach.

"This is she. What can I do for you?"

"I'm afraid I have some bad news."

She listens to the principal's grim retelling, the details clouded by her growing rage.

_…broken shoulder, collarbone…second-degree burns…_

She swallows, light-headed, as she realizes there was no way Isaac could have inflicted that kind of damage without…

_…without using his power._

"I want to impart on you the seriousness of this situation, Ms. Scully. The Millers could press charges, and they'd be well within their rights to do so. William is not welcome at this school for the rest of the year. The board will hold an evaluation at the start of the next school year to determine whether he will be allowed back after that time."

She closes her eyes to the unending drone of his voice. "Yes. I understand. No, I…we understand. I'm sorry for the trouble."

She hangs up the phone, keeping an iron grip on the phone long after the conversation ends.

"Scully?" Mulder is peering at her with concern.

"Suspension," she intones, wheeling on her partner and their son, realizing she's equally furious with both of them; Mulder, for not telling her about the fighting in the first place, and Isaac, for flaunting his ability, sabotaging the precarious new life they've built for him.

Understanding glances across Mulder's face as he turns to Isaac. "Something you wanted to tell us, kid?"

The boy looks from him to Scully and back, searching for sympathy, but there's none to be found. Scully's arms are folded across her chest in defense, Mulder's jaw is set in a tense line.

"He…he attacked me first! He and his stupid friends, they pinned me, I couldn't…I couldn't get away," he explodes into the silent room. "I tried to do what you said, I tried to walk away," he implores, directing his attention to Mulder. If anyone is an ally, it will be him, but this time the man's eyes are black with disappointment.

"I didn't touch him," Isaac continues, voice wavering.

"We both know you didn't have to," Scully shoots back, her words rough and unsteady.

"I didn't mean to! You have to believe me."

Scully's eyes alight with a fury that makes even her partner blanch. "No more excuses! You've made a huge mistake. Huge, Isaac, I can't even tell you how bad this is for us."

"But I—"

"No! I don't want to hear it. Go to your room," she growls. "I don't want to see your face right now."

She regrets the words instantly, but the intensity of her anger and fatigue have combined to form the perfect storm, and Isaac stands in the eye of the hurricane.

His chin trembles, but he doesn't break her gaze. "No! You won't listen to me, so I don't have to listen to you!"

"You will listen to me, Isaac, or—"

"Or what?" he fires back, lips shining with spittle. "What else could you possibly do to me?"

She swallows, blinks, gapes.

"I fucking hate you!"

Her confirmation comes loud and insistent as a gunshot fired point-blank. Isaac has already fled to his room, hinges snapping with the force of the slamming door.

Silence settles around them, a smothering blanket over the flames. Scully sinks to the couch, covering her face with weary hands. "Oh, my God," she whispers into her palms, "That was horrible."

Mulder winces. His hand goes to her shoulder, but she doesn't feel it. "I'll talk to him."

Her temper flares, a retort poised on the tip of her tongue—_because that worked so well last time_—but Isaac's outburst has ripped the fight from her, left her raw.

"I need to get back," she says flatly. "I'm going to get changed."

#

Her footsteps are heavy on the stairs, leaving Mulder at a loss. He's sitting on the couch tapping a nervous patter on his knee when she comes back, fresh from the shower, wearing new clothes. She looks like she's been crying.

"Scully—"

"I can't...not now," she murmurs, gathering her briefcase, repacking the files within. "I need to go."

"Just…listen to me. I know that was hard, but this is…this is progress. He's testing us, Scully. He trusts us enough to to say that because he knows we won't abandon him."

She glares at her partner incredulously until it clicks. "You read the book."

He tests a smile, sheepish. "Yeah, I did."

"You said it was stupid."

"I say a lot of stupid things."

She stops short with her hand gripping the doorknob, closes her eyes. "Mulder…I can't…"

"It'll be alright, Scully. You'll see."

She gives a watery sigh, leaving a rush of bitter air in her wake. He waits until he hears the crunch of her tires fading down the gravel drive before approaching the door to the boy's room.

"Isaac? We need to talk."

There's a muffled thud from within, then silence.

_Those damn headphones…_

He waits a beat, raising his voice in hopes of being heard over the din. "I'm coming in."

To his surprise, the door swings open on its own before he can act. Isaac is laying on his bed, staring at the ceiling with his hands behind his head, a posture that bears a striking similarity to his father's.

Mulder pauses, uncertain. He didn't think the kid would open the door; now he doesn't know what to say.

Isaac solves the problem for both of them. "I get it, I'm in trouble."

"Yeah, you made yourself a pretty shitty bed today," Mulder agrees. "Want to talk about it?"

"You mean you want to yell at me some more?"

"No. Although what you said to Scully back there…that was a mistake, Isaac. And we both know you didn't mean it."

The boy doesn't respond, just stares at the ceiling, but there's a flicker of something—_regret?_—in his bright blue eyes.

Mulder looks up to find a circle of pencils floating precariously above Isaac's head, and the sight temporarily stuns him. Those pencils used to be lodged in the ceiling, but now they're floating—_no, spinning, like a mobile_—above them.

It's easy to forget just how much this kid is capable of, and seeing the boy casually making magic takes his breath.

They both watch for a full minute, until Isaac makes a quick jerk with his index finger and sends the pencils across the room, bouncing off the wall. One embeds itself point-first into the unfinished sheetrock.

"Well," Mulder says drily, "that's new."

"You wanted to know what happened," Isaac whispers.

Mulder blinks, making the connection. "You sent the kid flying?"

"He didn't give me a choice. I told you, he and his jerkface friends had me pinned."

Mulder nods, carefully, equally impressed and dubious. "You know it's dangerous—and stupid—to do that."

"I know. But she doesn't _listen_ to me. These guys…they don't care, they just keep coming back, and I can't…I don't know what to do. The teachers aren't paying attention."

"That's a hell of a way to get their attention, Isaac."

"Yeah, well."

Mulder sinks slowly onto the end of the bed, wondering if there's more to Scully's fears than he'd wanted to believe. He bites his lip in frustration. "You know she's doing the best she can, right?"

Isaac sniffs but doesn't respond.

"You do," Mulder says, "or you wouldn't have said it. I get that you're pissed, I get that you want to make the other guy pay. But there have to be limits, Isaac. There are rules. And in this family—because that's what we are now, whether you like it or not—we have to take care of each other."

They're quiet. The word "family" is shifty and unpredictable. The boy will always think of his adoptive parents as his family. Mulder will always equate family with drunken post-bedtime arguments and violent separation.

For both of them, it's inevitable loss.

Isaac sits up. "What about the information you found?"

Mulder presses his lips together, shaking his head with quiet relief. "I don't think it's a good idea to pursue that."

"You said it was my choice."

"I did, I know. But this…changes things."

Isaac looks disappointed, but not surprised, and he flops back onto the bed. "Yeah. I figured."

"If you can't control yourself around the school jerk, what makes you think you'll make sound decisions when you come up against one of the real bad guys? You can't just…react," he says, struggling to explain, his voice growing soft. "I shouldn't have encouraged this, I'm sorry I did. She was right about that."

Isaac is stone-faced, sullen. The silence grows too heavy, too thick, and eventually Mulder stands to leave.

"Mulder?"

"Yeah?"

But Isaac doesn't know what to say. _I'm sorry_ would be a good start, but he can't bring himself to feel sorry about Buddy. What he said to the doc, on the other hand…

Mulder seems to understand the boy's conflict, and simply shrugs, resigned. "Looks like it's just you and I for a while, kid."

The disappointment flickering in Mulder's eyes is worse than the school suspension. Long after he's left, the words loop like a broken record until even the headphones can't drown them out.

_Family, whether you like it or not._


	10. Chapter 10

MARCH 27, 2015

11 P.M.

OUR LADY OF SORROWS

Scully shuts the office door, navigating through the maze of clutter to collapse into her desk chair, exhausted.

She's off for the night, but her nerves are frayed, her blood hums with bitter cafeteria coffee. Going home doesn't seem like a good idea in her current state. The love seat across from her desk will suffice as a bed, if she can manage to close her eyes long enough to sleep.

She's reaching for her water bottle, ready to follow her caffeine binge with a Tylenol chaser, when her hand brushes the computer mouse and brings up the photo—an old picture of her and Mulder she keeps as her desktop background.

_No Isaac._

In fact, there's no sign of him in this office. No school photos tucked into frames, no family portraits hung on the walls, not even one of the scant few baby pictures she kept. Photos might invite questions she doesn't know how to answer.

And yet, he's taken up permanent residence in her mind tonight. She's thought about little else while going about her rounds.

_I fucking hate you._

Her pulse throbs at her temples in time with the tick of the clock, a steady reminder that the longer she sits here, the less time she has to sleep.

_I won't be able to sleep._

Her nails patter against the desk in a rhythmic debate, before picking up the phone and dialing the familiar number, starting with a California area code. At first no one picks up, and she's about to drop the receiver back in the cradle until she hears a faint whisper.

"Yes?"

"Mom? It's me…it's Dana," she adds, feeling awkward for having to clarify to one of the few who should know her voice by heart. It's been too long.

"Dana! Of course! How are you?"

"I'm…I'm well, Mom. How are you? You sound sick."

"Oh, just a cold, I think. Nothing to worry about. What are you doing up at this hour? It's late."

Scully smiles to herself, bathing in her mother's familiar concern. "I just got off shift. I had a few minutes…I miss you," she admits. "I wanted to hear your voice."

"Oh…I miss you, too. It's been a long time."

And there it is, a pang of guilt so Catholic, Scully has to resist the urge to cross herself. Scully may be an accomplished doctor and a former FBI agent, but Margaret Scully has a knack for reducing her to a little girl with just a few carefully placed words. She takes a shaky breath.

"Yeah, I know…I'm sorry. It's been busy."

"How's that sweet little boy of yours?"

"He's not very little…or very sweet, actually," Scully says, surprised at the shape of her own disdain. Margaret Scully knows her old-turned-new grandson only through the occasional long-distance phone call.

"Oh…I see." Maggie's measured pause speaks volumes. She won't press the issue, but somehow, before this conversation is over, Scully will tell her everything. "Well, I hope he's doing well in school. You know, Bill was saying…"

Her mother chats lightly, talking about Scully's nephews and niece, her brother's new job, her sister-in-law's volunteer work at their church. Scully listens politely about a family that feels like they belong to a different person in a different life. In many ways, this is the problem exactly.

She hasn't seen her siblings in years; they've barely spoken. First because it had to be this way, then because they'd simply fallen out of habit. She was the forgotten baby sister who'd given up her flesh and blood to be with her lunatic FBI partner. Such betrayal wasn't easily forgiven.

There's a lull in the conversation, and Scully feels the question fall from her lips, the reason she picked up the phone. "Mom? Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"Did you ever worry you weren't doing a good job? As a mother, I mean."

"Oh...I don't know…I didn't have much time to worry, Dana. Your father was away, and I had four of you to keep track of. Melissa and Charlie gave me fits," she laughs, "but you're all successful, happy, well-adjusted, so I…"

Scully has to bite her tongue to keep from laughing out loud at the thought.

_"Well-adjusted." We always had different definitions._

"Dana, honey? Are you there? Oh, this foolish phone…I think it cut out on me again."

"No, I'm here. Sorry. I've just…it's hard, Mom," she finishes lamely, unspoken words closing her throat.

Maggie is nothing if not perceptive. "Dana, is everything OK?"

She swallows, knowing she can't hide from her mother, even three-thousand miles away. It's for the best that her family doesn't know the full story, but it makes it difficult to convey the gravity of the boy's situation—or the depth of Scully's uncertainty about him. The words do the job for her, tumbling out of her before she can stop them.

"I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what we were thinking…he's been through so much, and I have no idea how to help him. I feel like everything I say just pushes him further away…he hates me, Mom."

There's a heavy pause, and Scully closes her eyes, listening to the rush of her own breath, waiting for absolution.

"Dana," her mother finally says, "do you remember when you were fourteen? You and your father… you argued constantly. When he was home—which wasn't often, but it was enough—I thought I'd never hear the end of your bickering."

Scully shakes her head, trying to remember, but fourteen feels so far away. That life has been reduced to snapshots, Kodachrome memories that belong to a camera. "I don't know. That was a long time ago," she murmurs.

"Well, I remember enough for both of us. The two of you were at each other's throats. You were just as stubborn and strong-willed as your father, you know."

Scully sniffs, smiling a little, biting her tongue for her mother's sake. Her stubbornness comes honestly from both sides of the family.

"But you grew up. You got your degree. You learned to stand on your own." Scully can hear the smile, the pride in her mother's voice. "You were always your father's little girl, no matter what. There was nothing you could say or do to change that."

Scully finds herself struggling to keep her voice steady. "I…I know. But Mom…I can't help it, I feel like I'm failing him." She bites her lip, realizing she's not sure if she means Isaac or her father.

"Oh, Dana. When your father passed away…all you wanted was his acceptance. It was written all over your face."

The words fall on her heart like a stone, but it's her next question that gives Scully pause.

"What makes you think Isaac is different? He's a boy, but he'll grow up, and he's going to look up to you. All he wants is your love, your acceptance. I know you, Dana…you have more than enough to give."

Scully swallows hard, not trusting herself to speak.

"Don't give up on him, Dana."

Scully's voice is liquid and small. "Thanks, Mom."

The significance of the moment is cut short by a hacking cough on Maggie's end of the phone.

"Mom? Are you sure you're OK?"

"Oh…I'm fine," she responds when she's regained her voice. "Nothing I haven't weathered before."

"Mom, please, get checked out. There's a bug going around, and you can't be too careful at your age," Scully continues. "Is Bill there? Can he take you to the walk-in clinic?"

"Dana, I'm fine," Maggie insists, and Scully knows the "at your age" comment has ruffled her feathers. "I got that flu shot last fall. I know you're a doctor, but—"

"I'm not talking to you as a doctor, I'm talking to you as your daughter, Mom. Your very concerned daughter."

A sigh on the other end of the line. "Bill isn't here, but Tara is. She can take me to the clinic if it gets worse, but I'm going to be just fine," she says. "You worry about taking care of that boy. And Mulder," she adds, almost as an afterthought, lowering her voice. "I'm still waiting for that wedding invitation, you know."

Scully rolls her eyes, amazed that this particular subject never fails to weasel its way into their long-distance phone calls. "Mom, please."

"I'm just saying, Dana, I'm not getting any younger, and I'd love to see one of my daughters walk down the aisle before I go."

The unspoken insinuation lingers._ Melissa will never have that chance._ She shuts her eyes against another wave of guilt.

"Mom? Stop."

Her lips twitch upward despite herself. The idea of Mulder in a tux, standing at the altar next to a Catholic priest and flanked by his three best men, makes her snort with the sheer improbability.

_Frohicke would sob like a baby. Isaac could levitate the ring down the aisle on a pillow. They'd have to take out a preemptive restraining order on Bill just to get through the ceremony._

She stifles a laugh at the thought, until Maggie interrupts the fantasy with a sigh. "Such a modern woman, my Dana. Well, then. I suppose I should get going," she coughs again, and the sound makes Scully wince.

"I love you, Mom. Take care of that cold," she says, with the same sternness she might use with an unruly patient, before letting her voice soften. "I miss you. We'll come out to visit soon."

It's a lie, and they both know it, but Maggie accepts it with grace. "We'd love to see you."

"I know. Bye, Mom."

"Goodbye, Dana."

Scully places the phone back in the cradle, unsure how a conversation with her mother can make her feel equally better and worse. She chides herself, making a mental note to call Maggie more often, knowing she won't follow through.

Scully stands, yawning, and makes her way to the love seat where she curls into a ball, pulling her jacket over her shoulders as a makeshift blanket. She doesn't expect sleep to come—she's thinking about her mom, about Isaac, feeling the pull of her family's weight on her heart—but it does, washing over her slowly, until her eyes flutter shut and her breathing evens.

She dreams of the military bases where she grew up, of her father's strong and certain hands lifting her high on his shoulders, of William as a baby, and Isaac, spinning silver in the air. Memories weave themselves together, overlapping, until she can no longer discern past from present, and she sleeps.


	11. Chapter 11

MARCH 28, 2015

SCULLY RESIDENCE

12:32 A.M.

_In the dream, he's traveling an unending road through a strange city. There's no one for miles, though remnants of life remain; litter, mostly, and rusty cars parked at odd angles across the street. They're empty, always empty._

_Eventually he stops checking._

_He keeps moving in hopes he'll encounter someone, something to explain the desertion. The air is thick and heavy with smoke, but he can't see the source._

A fire? A bomb, maybe?

_The wind blows hot and dry against his cheeks. His lungs pull in and out, in and out, acutely aware of his breath in the stillness, the last of the living things._

_"Hello?"_

_ His voice dies off, thin and willowy, enveloped by smoke. He doesn't know what scares him more; the thought that he may never hear another human voice again, or the the thought that someone—_something_—might answer._

_"Is anyone there?"_

_Something else's memory guides him across unfamiliar ground as he makes his way into a narrow alley. It would be a tight fit for a grown man, but Isaac is slim, his shoulders slipping easily between the crumbling, weathered buildings._

_The door beckons from the depths of the alleyway like an old guard, a forgotten soldier hidden beneath a curtain of vines. The plants scrape his fingers as he draws them aside, leaving angry pink welts across his heart line. _

_This is the part where instinct tells him to run. He never listens._

Maybe it won't work this time.

_False hope. The handle turns fluidly, the door opening on silent, well-oiled hinges, swinging wide like a gaping mouth. He steps over broken glass and thick layers of rotting paper to cross the threshold. The air is stale, but it's a welcome respite from the smoke._

Turn back, Isaac.

_It's the same every time: A shadowed hallway with rooms on either side, green light spilling from beneath locked doors. He knows they're locked because he's tried them, every last one, with the same result. The definition of insanity._

_The lights grow dim as he continues, casting murky shadows. His figure lumbers along, stretched and alien against the painted concrete walls._

"Hello?"

_Passing room after room with no response, the hallway seems to go on forever. He's forced to take a right, passing through a set of doors that swing wide without so much as a groan. The world outside is covered in the film of an unknown number of years, but inside it's pristine, untouched._

Run, run, fast as you can.

_The rhyme pops into his head, and part of him wants to heed the call of his childhood subconscious. He should leave this place._

_"Hello?" His voice sounds too loud in his ears, vocal chords stretched taut with fear._

_ Beyond the doors lies the kind of deep, inky darkness that reminds him of his mother, just before she was taken, sucked into nothingness. He doesn't want to go there, but whatever has driven him to this place can be found only by forging ahead, so he does. Step after step until his outstretched hand meets cold resistance._

_The last door._

But you knew it would be here. It's always here.

_A whisper at the back of his neck. A foreign tongue caressing his mind with ancient fingers._

Not again, _he thinks with dread, but it's too late. He can't go back, there is no other path._

_He finds the handle, silently begging it to stick, to be locked, to come off in his hand. Anything to stop him from looking beyond. The same wish, the same door, the same answer._

_A blood moon shines down over a valley that burns with acute ferocity. It has burned like this for years—tens, hundreds, or thousands, it no longer matters._

_The tongues lash and swirl at his inner thoughts, a rising chorus of agony that doubles him over at the threshold. He can't pull his eyes from the destruction laid before him, all the dead of the world at his feet, as if to say, "This is your inheritance."_

_The dream always ends this way, with Isaac's body folded on the ground, his eyes fixed to the burnt red sky, full of a knowledge so heavy, so cloying, it bursts open like rotten fruit._

They're here.

#

He wakes with a start, slick with cold sweat. The voices linger, echoing in the corners of his mind, and for a few terrifying moments he can't tease apart the dream from reality. The tangled sheets hold his clammy body captive, and he twists and turns in a frenzied panic.

_Get out! Let go!_

Fight or flight becomes flight, but there's nothing to flee from in the safety of his cluttered, drafty room. He lays flat, heart racing, coming to with the sinking realization that the dream has grown more real.

He can still smell the smoke.

_It's happening…_

Like that night in the woods, the night he can barely remember. There had been the forest, the dark trees swaying in the night sky, the sudden light, he knows he saved them…but the rest is as fuzzy as the ominous presence in the dream.

He stifles a sob, gasping for air, hoping he didn't cry out this time. The last thing he wants is Mulder hovering, asking questions…or worse, the doc. She would put her hand to his forehead, ask Mulder to fetch a cool cloth, make Isaac lie still, check his pulse.

But they all know the problem isn't his heart.

He hears the lull of Mulder's dreams above him, a small comfort, but there's more. Out there, beyond the old walls of their rural farmhouse, he can hear something else, too.

_Them._

The ones they've been waiting for. They're a hiss at the edge of his consciousness, grasped at feebly but never captured, slipping away like a silvery fish in a vast ocean.

Moonlight filters through the window, casting long shadows that remind him of the dream. He turns away with a shudder, pulling the quilt around his shoulders, though nothing can stop the shivering.

There are hours to go before morning, but he won't sleep tonight.

#

MARCH 28, 2015

The doc doesn't come back that night, or the night after. He overhears Mulder talking to her on the phone, though they don't have to speak aloud for Isaac to understand. She's working a double shift, sleeping at the hospital.

_Staying away from me._

He sits on his bed, knees drawn to his chest, wondering how his bad luck managed to draw not just one distant mother, but two.

Mulder finds him curled up with a book that evening.

"Hey...want to help make dinner?"

Isaac shrugs, but his traitorous stomach grumbles at the smell of fried onion and peppers. He follows Mulder into the kitchen.

He's opening a can of tomatoes before he works up the nerve to ask. "She's pissed at me…isn't she?"

Mulder makes a soft sound of acknowledgment as he pours macaroni into a pot. "She's not all that happy with me, either," he admits. "She'll come around, though."

_Fat chance_, Isaac thinks glumly.

"She will," Mulder insists, reading Isaac's thoughts in that uncanny way he has; a former profiler with too much time on his hands. "I know Scully. She's forgiven me for worse."

Isaac raises an eyebrow. "Like what?"

"Like bailing me out of prison…more than once," Mulder says, a hesitant half-smile on his face as steam wafts from the bubbling pot. "A school suspension and a few words are hardly a jail sentence. Which doesn't," he says, pointing his fork in Isaac's direction to emphasize his point, "make what you did OK."

"I guess," Isaac mutters, poking at the contents of the frying pan without enthusiasm.

"Scully doesn't give up easily. Give her some time."

_But how much time do we have?_

The thought comes from nowhere, from the depths of a bad dream, and Isaac shivers slightly despite the heat coming off the stove.

"Oh, and you're grounded."

He shakes himself back to the conversation, nonplussed. "That's it? I'm grounded?"

Mulder cocks a wry eyebrow. "What, you expected us to send you back to Skinner?"

"I just thought…" he swallows, dropping his eyes, as Mulder has come closer to the point than either of them would admit, "I thought maybe it would be worse."

Mulder shakes his head, suddenly isolated, lost in his thoughts. "You're a keeper," he murmurs, just as Isaac has a flash of unfamiliar memory…

_…dim light, warmth, a chemical smell, like bleach…_

He considers asking what it means, but Mulder has already moved on. They heap steaming pasta and sauce onto their plates, skipping the table in Scully's absence. They eat on the couch instead, drinks balanced on their laps.

When they're finished, Mulder sets his plate aside. "Want to kill some undead?"

"Thought I was grounded."

Mulder stretches, hands behind his head as he leans back into the cushions. "You got me—I've never grounded someone before," he says. "Just don't go throwing any more kids into walls, OK?"

Isaac snorts, but it seems they've made their peace. Neither makes a move to pick up the controllers. Mulder tips his head back, eyes closed, and the silence stretches out. Isaac surprises himself, uneager to return to the self-induced solitary confinement of his room. His mind wanders.

"Mulder?" His voice comes out unnaturally small, and ripple of fear passes between them at the hollow, trembling note.

"Yeah?"

"Something's changing," he murmurs.

Mulder leans forward and bites his lip, considering this, and Isaac feels a wave of relief that the man doesn't scoff, doesn't balk, just asks the next logical question. "How so?"

"I don't know yet, but I can feel it…it's like…like…I dunno," he groans, frustrated at his inability to voice his fears, the sense that the world is teetering on the brink of some great abyss. "Everything is wrong."

Another flash of thought, but Mulder is quick to conceal it, locking it away beyond Isaac's mental reach. He narrows his eyes, probing, but Mulder looks away, because they're both thinking the same thing.

#

MARCH 29, 2015

10:30 A.M.

By the next day, he can't stand the sight of his room, the empty house, the whisper of Mulder's thoughts. A quick look around tells him Mulder is holed up in his office, so Isaac tugs on his sneakers and eases the screen door closed on its rusty hinges, careful not to let it slam. It isn't difficult to sneak out, though until now he's never had reason to.

It's a twenty-minute walk if he's quick, but today he takes his time. He has no desire to go back to the barren farmhouse with its sullen silence, too much like his dreams to be comfortable.

He finds her backpack sitting on their rock, but no Alice. They'd planned to meet, but that was before he put her brother in the hospital. The sight of her pack is both unsettling and a relief.

_Maybe she doesn't know yet._ _Maybe she's pissed at you._

He looks to the left, to the right, down the slope to the surface of the stream. He realizes how quiet it is here, how remote. Suddenly the sight of the rusted out car nestled amongst the trees is not comforting at all. The discarded cans and broken bottles gleam in the morning sun, like blades shimmering in the grass. His heart beats faster, his mind going to the kind of dark recesses his father knows all too well.

_Maybe she was taken, what if the pack is a decoy? What if they're using it to—_

"Isaac! Over here!"

Her voice rings out across the clearing, and he lets out the breath he didn't realize he was holding. She's been there all along. Now she waves a small bunch of wildflowers in greeting.

He waves back, a slow pass of his hand through the air, hoping the scare doesn't show on his face.

She closes the distance and hands him the scrappy bouquet, turning suddenly to sneeze into the crook of her arm. "Allergies," she mutters, swiping at her nose. "You're late."

He swallows thickly, searching her face for reproach. "I had to sneak out."

"I didn't see you in class yesterday," she begins, looking him in that way she does, as if she's seeing not just into his eyes but through them. "Then I got home and found out…what happened, Isaac?"

_She knows. Shit._

"I…we got in a fight," he says, a flush of shame creeping across his face.

"Yeah. I heard mom and dad talking about it…they aren't going to press charges. I think they're more pissed at Buddy...they know how he is," she sighs.

_The doc will be happy to hear that._ Isaac feels a slight lessening of the tension across his shoulders. _Maybe I'm not a complete fuck-up after all._

"They don't know I'm here, either," she continues. "I don't think they'd be happy I'm hanging out with you since…you know."

_Since I tried to kill your brother._ His mind fills in the blanks for both them.

"Look, I'm really sorry—"

Alice cuts him off with a shrug, her expression murky, but not exactly conflicted. "Whatever. Buddy's a jerk. He deserved it." She brushes past him to dig through her pack. "I brought my lit stuff. So you can help me? My mom'll kill me if I fail the make-up test tomorrow." She lifts a paper-wrapped novel from her bag. She's doodled all over the cover, swirls and lyrics, he catches a glimpse of her initials in fancy script along the binding.

_I wonder if my initials are on there_, he thinks, his face growing warm at the thought before he brushes it aside quickly, as though she were the one who could read his mind and not the other way around.

They spend half an hour going over her analysis _Of Mice and Men_ before he realizes he's no help at all. At one point he looks up from the book to find her staring at him as though he has three heads, and he wonders in a mild panic if he has something between his teeth.

"Ugh, I just don't get it," she says, slapping the book shut with a definitive thud. "It's stupid anyway. I want to be a doctor. I'm never going to need to know this stuff."

Isaac smiles, because he can imagine her a doctor. She looks the part, serious and sharp. "Yeah, it's pretty stupid."

They sit in uncomfortable silence, her picking at a fray on the knee of her jeans, him trying to think of something to say that won't reveal his nervousness.

Finally Alice stands up. "I have an idea," she proclaims, and he knows that, whatever it is, he will agree to it. He is strong, his mind is sharp, but she has a different kind of strength entirely.

She grabs the book, and before he can ask what's up, she's jogging to the edge of the stream. He opens his mouth to protest, because he can already tell what's she's going to do, but she's faster, nimble on her feet. He moves to join her at the edge of the water just as she lets the book fly, tucking it into her arm like a frisbee, then letting go with a soft cry that makes his heart quiver.

The paper-covered missile glides along the air and lands with a great splash that makes Isaac grin, sharing in her glee even as the thought of destroying the book gives him pause. They share a secret now; a silly thing, a child's thing, but something he'll hold on to long after she's gone.

He moves up beside her, and she turns to him, laughing. "Lennie and George can suck it," she pronounces triumphantly. Her hand grazes his and he feels himself grow warm. Before the joy of this simple contact can register, she leans in and brushes her lips against his. The softness of her mouth is so fleeting, he wonders if he's imagined the kiss.

She's standing close, with her face next to his, smiling a knowing smile. He swallows, then smiles back, the grin plastering itself across his face before he can contain it. Then her hand is in his, giving it a brief squeeze before she pulls away, reaching down to pick up a flat, weathered stone.

"Bet I can beat your record."

He shakes his head and shrugs, speechless, watching as her arm arcs back, flinging the stone, which hops across the surface of the water. He loses count at five, he's too distracted, watching her. It sinks into the brackish water, but the ripples crest outward, seeming to go on forever.

He's so caught up in thinking about the kiss that he doesn't hear the telltale way she clears her throat, as if it might be getting a bit sore; doesn't notice the sneezing that continues, even though her wildflowers have long since been abandoned on the ground behind them.


	12. Chapter 12

MARCH 29, 2015

9:08 A.M.

Scully peeks into the waiting room of Our Lady of Sorrows with a resigned sigh.

_The weekend rush. It never fails._

The nurses are moving in and around, busying themselves with vitals and triage. There's a boy with his forearm bent at an odd angle, tears running down his otherwise stoic young face; a man coughing into his handkerchief, dark circles under his eyes; and the usual assortment of lacerations, contusions, and all-around bad luck.

"Another busy one," nurse Carroll says, coming up behind Scully. "Seems like we haven't had a dull moment in weeks."

"That time of year," Scully murmurs, tension winding along her shoulders. Two nights on the couch in her office have left her with a sizable kink in her neck.

_I'll sleep in my own bed tonight_, she decides. _I'll apologize to Isaac. Maybe we can get him into private school to finish the year…oh, God, the tuition alone…maybe Mulder can withdraw some of his inheritance to cover—_

"Doctor Scully?"

Scully blinks, realizes the nurse is holding out a chart for her.

"Mmm, sorry," she demurs, accepting the clipboard. "What do I have to look forward to?"

"Ahh….Mr. Partridge in room 172 is back. He says this time it's lupus." The nurse hands her the folder, rolling her eyes.

_Ahh, the resident hypochondriac…a regular customer._

Scully sighs. "Anything else?"

"We just put a patient in 173, he's complaining of a cough."

Scully takes the record and glances at it with a forced smile. "Thanks, Wanda."

Fifteen minutes later, she leaves room 173 with what she hopes is a reassuring air.

"Take ibuprofen for the fever, Mr. Fitzpatrick, and call your regular doctor tomorrow. Get some rest," she says. "It's just a virus. You'll feel much better in a week."

She's on her way to check in on the hypochondriac in 172 when she hears a commotion from the waiting room, where a cluster of patients and nurses are crowded around something on the floor. She approaches to find the coughing man with the dark eyes convulsing as another doctor kneels beside him.

"Stand clear, give us some room!"

"Does he have a history of seizures? Epilepsy?" Scully asks, elbowing her way through to kneel at the man's left side, stabilizing his shuddering body at the shoulder.

"Not that we know of," Dr. Simone mutters. "He's coming out of it."

She nods, a feeling of unease settling around her as the man gives a last feeble twitch against her fingers, and blinks. His eyes are cloudy and confused, his complexion worrisome.

"I think we've got it from here, Dr. Scully. Thanks," Dr. Simone gives her a strained smile.

"Let me know if there's anything I can do."

"Just keep them moving through," she mutters, watching as a pair of EMTs lift the man onto a stretcher, wheeling him beyond the double doors and into the bowels of the hospital. She can hear the nurses whispering amongst themselves as she returns to her post.

"He just collapsed. Fine one minute, down the next."

"Celia took his vitals. He was probably dehydrated."

"That's the third one this weekend."

Scully frowns. Something about the man's appearance doesn't settle well, but she doesn't have time to dwell on it. The nurse is waiting for her with the next chart.

_Partridge will have to wait._

"Mrs. Dunner, eighty, came in earlier this morning. She's got quite a cough, but she's stable."

Scully nods and enters the room without looking up, skimming the woman's history. "Mrs. Dunner, hi, I'm Dr. Scully…and how are you feeling toda—"

_Oh, Jesus._

There's no need to ask. The woman's illness is written in the translucent skin around her eyes, the drawn gray bow of her mouth.

Scully smiles weakly, trying to cover her shock. Nurse Carroll's words come back to her—_got quite a cough, but she's stable_—and Scully wonders if she's made a mistake. She glances at the chart to be sure.

"Oh…Mrs. Dunner, can you ahh, confirm your birthdate?"

"January 24, 1935."

_It's her. 'Stable' my ass._

Scully nods, continuing with forced cheer. "So what brings you in today?"

"Well…" she coughs, a hacking sound that makes Scully wince. "It started…a day ago. I…I think I have a touch of the flu."

"Let's take a look," Scully moves to the woman's side, gently taking her papery wrist in hand, checking her pulse.

_Thready._

"Mrs. Dunner, do you have a history of heart problems? Any arrhythmia?"

The woman looks confused. "No…I…I felt a little weak this morning."

Scully wraps a cuff around the woman's arm, feels her sway slightly in her grasp. "I'm going to ask you to lie down…let's get your blood pressure."

She smiles with false reassurance as she watches the numbers rise and then fall in a rapid descent.

Scully turns away, intending to get the nurse. "It's low. Mrs. Dunner, I'd like to admit you and run some tests. I'm going to check on the availability of a room until we've stabilized—"

The woman's cough returns with a vengeance. When Scully turns back, she finds the woman doubled over, covered in a spray of her own blood.

_Blood? No, that's not…_is Scully's only thought before the woman collapses, sliding off the exam table, her tiny body floating to the ground like a feather.

"Doctor…I think…" the woman whispers in a soft, hoarse voice, red and black still falling from her mouth in a river.

"Nurse!" cries Scully, kneeling in a pool of the slippery liquid. "Nurse, I need help in here!"

She presses the emergency intercom pager, then kneels to check for a pulse.

_Nothing. Shit._

She's hovering over the woman with her hands on her chest, counting out compressions, but no one rushes in, no one has heard the call. She rises, heels skidding on the slick mess. The woman's mouth hangs open, eyes glazed and unfocused.

_No, no no no_, thinks Scully. _I am not losing you, dammit, not today._

She runs to the hallway, heading for the nearest cart. A nurse jogs up to her from the other end of the hall. One of the new hires, his name tag reads _Trey_.

"You! 170, code blue," she demands breathlessly, darting past him to grab the crash cart.

"Got it!"

The sight of the woman on the floor, surrounded by a pool of blood, stops him in his tracks, wide-eyed. Scully nearly crashes into him, frozen like a statue in the doorway.

"Move!"

Trey does as he's told, carefully sidestepping the woman's collapsed body to kneel by her head. There are flecks of blood in her gray-white perm.

Just as Scully is preparing the defibrillator, the woman's eyes fly open, rolling like marbles in their sockets, and a soft moan escapes her lips. Scully gasps and the paddles go clattering to the floor. She can hear Trey utter, "Jesus," under his breath.

"Mrs. Dunner…can you hear me? We're going to help you, Mrs. Dunner. Talk to me if you can."

The woman gives a soft gurgle, turning her head to the sound of Scully's voice, but her eyes continue to roll blindly. Her hand flies up, grabbing Scully by the wrist with surprising and ferocious strength.

"Mrs. Dunner…please—"

"Help…me…" the woman croaks in a thick voice, her eyes finally settling, wide and terrified, on Scully's face. Blood and spittle fly from her lips, staining Scully's jacket in a spray of black syrup. Her breath is foul, her hand like a claw around Scully's wrist, pulling, pulling…

_No…no, this isn't happening…_

She swallows, drawn into the woman's onyx eyes. She's pulled in, reminded of the shadows, a hypnotic dance…

Trey's voice pulls her attention away. "Dr. Scully? Is she…"

The woman's grip slackens, eyes turning dull and lifeless. Breathing hard, Scully reaches out to check for a pulse once more, hesitating as she recalls the spiny fingers against her flesh not moments before. The woman's mouth gapes open like a black hole.

"Get me…get me two milligrams of epi," she breathes, knowing it's no use.

_She's gone._

_#_

11:30 A.M.

She signs the paperwork for the coroner with an aching back and a heavy heart, and prepares to begin making calls. The woman's emergency contacts are few; a son who lives out of state, a nephew, but no husband, no other immediate family.

Convincing them to allow an autopsy will be difficult, but Scully doesn't want to leave anything to chance. The woman's symptoms and their sudden onset have set her mind reeling. The only known illnesses that present with such symptoms are highly contagious, and the thought of something so vicious spreading throughout the hospital gives her chills.

_You don't know anything for sure._ _Wait for the blood work to come back._

She had signed off on a blood sample, warning the coroner to take care. "Wear a mask; double-up your gloves. We can't be too careful with this one."

"You think there's something going around?" There's a nervous twitch in his eyes as he glances down, where she notices a smear of blood painting the hem of her skirt.

"It never hurts to be careful," she repeats with a tight smile.

Now, ducking into an empty exam room and pulling out her cell, she's prepared to deliver the ugly news when the phone rings of its own accord.

"Dr. Scully."

"Doctor, I'm experiencing chronic stiffness in my joints. Actually just one, and it's not so much a joint as a—"

She smiles a little despite herself, warming at the sound of his voice. "What do you want, Mulder?"

"Hey. I've been trying to reach you—"

"Yeah, it was a rough morning. I lost a patient," the words tumble out of her mouth before she can stop them, her voice dropping an octave as defeat settles in. "A couple hours ago. Flu symptoms but they were masking something else. It was strange…sudden…." There's a pause as she trails off.

"I'm sorry, Scully. The flu, huh?"

"Mm. Cough and fever. She lost a lot of blood," she says, lowering her voice, realizing she shouldn't be telling him this. "I need to do some research, we're still not sure what we're dealing with."

He's quiet, thoughtful. "Think I'm going to do a little research of my own."

"What's going on?"

"Nothing…I mean, everything's fine, I just…the guys hooked me up with a bunch of CDC databases, I can check it out."

"Mulder, no" she sighs, "If they catch you—"

"They won't catch me."

She squeezes her eyes shut at his familiar arrogance, biting her lip. "I'm serious, Mulder. If there's something going around, we need to let the CDC do their job."

"It's the CDC I'm worried about," he retorts drily.

"Mulder, I mean it. Stay out of this."

He doesn't answer, but his silence says enough. She hears his soft breathing on the other end of the line and closes her eyes, imagining him next to her, the same breath on her cheek.

"You OK?" he asks when she doesn't elaborate.

"Yeah, fine." She pauses, wondering if she wants to know the answer to the question she's about to ask. "How's Isaac?"

"I'm not sure, haven't seen him yet."

Her anxiety surges, instant and cutting. "What? Where is he?"

There's a soft, frustrated huff in her ear. "Oh, wait, he left a note. 'Dear mom and dad, joined a gang, dabbling in the dark arts, don't wait up. Love and kisses, Isaac.'"

She rolls her eyes. "That's not funny."

"I hope he's practicing safe satanism…"

"Mulder."

"C'mon, Scully, lighten up. He hasn't left his room, he's probably sleeping or something. Making the most of his early summer vacation."

She sighs, "Mulder, you have to—"

"Scully, I've got this," he says, cutting her off with more than a note of irritation, "I know I make a questionable father figure, but I'm not completely inept."

She swallows thickly. "I know that. I'm sorry, I just…after yesterday, and then this patient…I'm a little on edge."

"I think the phrase you're looking for is 'burned out', Scully."

She snorts, tries to take the edge out of her voice. "I'm fine, Mulder. After this week, I'll…I'll plan a vacation," she says, but her words lack conviction.

"I'll hold you to it. We can do one of those ridiculous Christmas travel things your mom's always raving about."

She smiles, playing along. "Someplace warm?"

"We'll fly out to the coast, get a cottage on the water, leave the kid with your mother. He gets quality time with grandma, we get a beach and a couple of fruity drinks, and as little clothing as is legally allowed."

It's a pipe dream, but the levity—and the thought of sipping a rum punch on the beach—lightens her mind. "Sounds like you've been planning this, Mulder."

"What can I say, I'm a good little wifey," he says drily.

She smiles. "I'll catch you later, wifey."

She's barely hung up before a nurse pokes her head around the corner. "Dr. Scully? Sorry to interrupt, but we need you out here."

"Coming," she sighs, realizing she hasn't had a chance to call the dead woman's family yet. It will have to wait.

_Yes,_ she thinks, making her way to the next exam room, _it's going to be a very long day._

#

Mulder works the end of a pen in his teeth, watching the blue cap bob up and down in front of his nose. Prior to calling Scully, he managed to write three sentences—all of it pure shit—before throwing in the proverbial towel to go for a run.

Now his mind is clear, the exercise having recharged him, but the writing isn't happening, and Scully's case is far more interesting.

_Cough and fever. She lost a lot of blood…_

When Mulder picks up the phone again, the greeting on the other end of the line is familiar and polite.

"Byers."

"What, no alias? I'm disappointed."

"That's Langly's thing," Byers replies. "Hey, Mulder. You got the video?"

Mulder blinks. "What video?"

"Frohicke sent it…the, ah, adult entertainment," Byers coughs, his embarrassment palpable through the phone.

"Byers, I had no idea," he says, but his curiosity is piqued.

An impatient sigh. "Did you watch it?"

"No, I didn't, I—"

"Just watch it, Mulder."

He arches an eyebrow, muttering as he opens Frohicke's email again, "Fine, but let the record show, I prefer to wait until the second date to bring pornography into the relationship, and you haven't even bought me dinner."

No response from his friend, not even a laugh, and something about Byers' silence sets Mulder's teeth on edge. He clicks the link, and sure enough, two blondes and an enviably well-endowed man are performing the age-old dance on his screen.

Mulder coughs. "Not bad, but I prefer redheads," he cracks. "Is there anything I'm supposed to be, uh, looking for, or are you trying to—"

The image suddenly changes, and his mouth goes dry.

_Jesus._

The screen shows what looks like a laboratory; a pristine, sterile backdrop, soiled by the subject in the center of the frame, an ashen smear on white canvas. The camera shakes a little, and Mulder hears the faint rustle of plastic behind the microphone. The camera pans up, and he glimpses gray-blue skin, veins dark and swollen along the legs. The upper body is burnt red, blanketed in blood, while the abdomen is a deep, angry black. Bruised.

_Young. Just a kid._

The man holding the video camera talks as the camera slides the length of the body.

_"Subject 645D, fifteen-year-old Caucasian male, infected with viral sample serial number 044521013 at 7:23 a.m. March 12, 2015._

_"Vaccination composite number 46325A administered to the infected…four days prior to subject's death. Subject showed no marked improvement. Results unsuccessful._

_"Subject will be disposed of, as per the neutralization protocol."_ A distinct sigh in the background. _"Time of death: 3:35 p.m. March 14, 2015."_

The screen goes black. Mulder swallows hard, tasting dust.

"I know there's a niche market for every fantasy, but I think I prefer the classics," he coughs. "Byers, what the hell did I just watch?"

"It was Frohicke's idea," Byers sighs, "to cloak the video, in case someone accessed your account."

_Of course it was_, Mulder thinks, closing his eyes.

"Our newsletter has a long-time benefactor who prefers to remain anonymous, says he has a friend of a friend at the CDC. He sent us the video…we thought you should see it."

Mulder sighs, fingers tapping an erratic, hollow beat on the desktop. "You still haven't told me what it is."

"We weren't sure at first, either, but we thought the guy holding the camera sounded familiar. So we played a hunch, ran the clip through voiceprint software and cross-referenced the result with an archive of news footage. It's a partial match for a Dr. Michael Kent. He's won several awards for his research into virology and immunology. He's a big name in medical circles; published in a number of journals, reputable ones. I'm sure Scully could tell you all about him," Byers adds.

"I bet she could, if she were here."

"Trouble in paradise?"

"No…no, she's at the hospital," Mulder mutters, distracted.

"Well, you'll recognize this name, then. Until a few years ago Kent had been working with a partner—a Dr. Kenneth Baray."

"Baray? Wait, Kenneth Baray? He was Isaac's doctor," he says.

"We figured you would have been following him, Mulder."

"Yeah, well…paradise is complicated," he sighs. "What do you think Kent was working on?"

"Obviously some kind of hot agent, maybe bio-weaponry," he says carefully, "Mulder, if Kent was part of the project too, if this is some kind of effort to cover their tracks…"

"Isaac," Mulder whispers, his son's name rolling off his tongue like a protective ward.

Byers makes a soft sound in acknowledgement.

Mulder pinches the bridge of his nose. "OK. Look, I need whatever you can get about these guys…employment history, credit reports, hell, dental records. Anything you can find."

"We'll do what we can. You might want to pull Isaac out of school…at least until we know more…"

"Yeah," Mulder says, swallowing hard, "we've already got that covered."

He closes the call and brings up Google, and Scully's dead patient is forgotten as the new mystery before him begins to unravel.


	13. Chapter 13

MARCH 29, 2015

9:30 P.M.

OUR LADY OF SORROWS

There are sixteen cases of the flu amongst the usual assortment of walk-ins that day. No deaths, but several are admitted for dehydration. By the time she gets back to her office, a nagging fear lingers at the back of Scully's addled mind, gnawing at her subconscious.

_How many of those admitted will be alive by morning?_

A cursory blood analysis from her elderly patient is laid on the desk before her, but she hesitates, as though acknowledging the results might cause her to meet the same fate. As she reads the lab reports, she realizes the autopsy she ordered is a moot point. The blood samples paint a gruesome picture of their own.

_A virus. She's riddled with it._

The strain has yet to be identified, but given the woman's symptoms, Scully's logical mind jumps to something violent—ebola, perhaps, or hanta.

_If it's contagious…_

The thought gives her a chill. She's reminded of the coughing man with his bruised eyes, convulsing on the waiting room floor. Her heart quickens, and she turns to her computer, searching the hospital records for recent admissions.

_Alan Cooper. D._

She swallows hard at the notation. _D. D for Deceased_, she thinks, stomach sinking as she clicks to expand the record. Bits and pieces jump out at her.

_Admitted this morning, complaining of flu symptoms. Seizure. High fever, chills._

_Coughing blood._

She navigates back to the main database, pulling up the emergency admittance history for the last week, filtering the results by the diagnostic code numbers for influenza.

_Ninety reported cases…that has to be an error_, she thinks as the records scroll by.

She sits back, folding her arms protectively around herself as reality sinks in, like a dead weight across her shoulders.

The initial effects are mild enough that most people will be turned away after a cursory checkup, mistaking their symptoms for a bad cold. Most won't seek treatment until they're near the end, and by then, it will be too late.

_Oh, God. How many people did I send home to die?_

#

"I need to talk to him."

The secretary glances up at Scully with an impatient eye roll, holding up a finger—_one minute_—before turning back to her conversation.

Narrowing her eyes, Scully storms up to the woman's desk and hits _End_.

"Hey, what the—"

"I need to talk to him _now_," she repeats, trying to keep her voice level.

"You need to—"

Scully doesn't wait for the woman's response. She finds the door to the inner office unlocked, but as she stands at the threshold, she realizes she doesn't know how to begin. Save for the hastily printed records she holds in her hands, there's little proof. Most of the sick were sent home with orders to rest, drink tea, and take ibuprofen—false promises of health and well-being.

They haven't come back.

_They can't come back, because they're already dead._

The thought tightens her grip, the papers damp under her fingers.

"Excuse me, Dr. Scully?" The director is looking at her with a calm that's almost predatory. She's interrupted what looks like a board meeting.

"Sir, if I could have a moment," she begins, hoping to draw him away from the rest of the room, which is too full, too dim. The hospital campus is firmly non-smoking and has been for years, but for a moment, she can almost smell cigarette smoke curling in the air.

"Whatever you need to say to me can be said in front of the rest of your colleagues, Dr. Scully."

She swallows, clenches her jaw. "Fine. We've had…an unusually large number of flu-like cases in the last several weeks. I know you're aware of this because of the limited resources allowed the emergency room."

He narrows his gaze. "And what exactly do you need, doctor?"

"Sir, I think we have a possible contagion that goes beyond the realm of a simple influenza outbreak," she says. "This morning a patient died. I have the results of a blood sample that show a virus of unidentified origin—"

The director looks nonplussed. "I don't see how one patient makes for a plague."

Her lips tighten to a narrow seam, and she draws herself up to her full height, offering the sheaf of printed papers. "There have been more than ninety reported influenza cases in the last week alone, and at least two deaths. That's unheard of for a hospital this size."

This appears to get his attention. The board shifts uneasily, a murmur rolling through the room.

He clears his throat, but barely glances at the reports. "And since when is a bad cold cause for alerting the authorities, Dr. Scully?"

Her teeth scrape against one another in a painful, gritty dance as she struggles to maintain her composure. "Sir, the virus that killed my patient was violent. Its symptoms were mild, the kind most people won't notice until they're beyond help. It struck without warning. And I have a connection," she gestures to her impromptu research, "that suggests another patient at this hospital may have died from the same infection around the same time. I don't have the lab results yet, but I have experience with this kind of pathology, if you give me some time, I can—"

"So your only evidence of infection is one patient's death?"

"Two."

"But you said the second patient never had lab work done."

"With more testing, we can isolate and confirm—"

He stops her with an abrupt cough. "I'm sorry, doctor, but your request is denied. Your talents are needed elsewhere. As you know," he looks over his shoulder, smiling reassuringly at the room full of suits, "this is a very difficult time for us here at Our Lady of Sorrows. It's 'all hands on deck' as it were. I'm sure you understand."

He's already placed a hand on her elbow, leading her away. The boards' eyes burn at her back until the door shuts them out, and she turns to face her superior with a hardened glint in her eye.

"Sir, with all due respect, if we can't devote the time to investigate, then call the CDC."

"Do you realize what kind of hell that would bring down on this hospital? And at this time? I will do no such thing," he hisses, thrusting the papers back at her.

_I've scared him_, she realizes, with a twist of righteous anger in her gut. _He's scared to death I'm right because he knows something._

She chastises herself for her errant paranoia as the director collects himself.

"Dr. Scully, if there is any infection, you can be sure we will follow protocol to a tee. But until you can bring me concrete evidence that suggests otherwise, I'm afraid there's nothing I can do for you."

He disappears into the den of his office before she can answer, the hollow thud of the door ringing in her ears. Anger simmers beneath her ribs, drawing a fiery line along the scars at her side, the papers still clutched in her hands. She retreats on numb legs, biting the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood.

_These aren't patients, they're paychecks._

The walk back is shrouded in a curtain of seething red, her pulse ticking like a fuse beneath the bones of her wrist. Back in her office, she looks down at the printouts with a newfound sense of purpose. The numbers haven't changed, but her resolve is ironclad.

_This will end your career. You'll be blackballed._

Her career is hardly the critical thing at stake tonight, if her intuition is correct.

She walks to her desk and picks up the phone, dialing the number she'd hesitated to call only minutes before, but this time her fingers are swift and decisive on the keys.

"My name is Dr. Dana Scully. I need to report an outbreak."


	14. Chapter 14

MARCH 30, 2015

4:53 P.M.

SCULLY RESIDENCE

Mulder finds Isaac with his legs flung over the arm of the couch, engrossed in his book and his MP3 player. The TV caws the in the background, and every light in the house is glowing despite the afternoon sun filtering through the dusty farmhouse windows.

He glances to the right, grimacing at the haphazard pile of dishes in the kitchen sink, a sticky orange mess splashed across the countertop, and the half-folded laundry creeping across the dining table.

"Hey, kid," he says, with a trace of irritation. He's lived in worse, the state of his office notwithstanding, but a hypocritical sense of responsibility calls. "Isaac, c'mon."

The boy still doesn't look up from his book, so Mulder reaches out and snaps his headphones away.

"Hey!"

"I'm talking to you," Mulder mutters. "I'm not sure what kind of hotel you think we're running here, but—"

He doesn't finish, as the television, still blaring, draws him away mid-sentence.

_"Tragedy struck this afternoon at a local high school, as several students collapsed…"_

The news anchor doesn't seem particularly phased, but it sends a tendril of fear snaking down the back of Mulder's neck, and he grabs the remote from the coffee table, turning it up so they can watch.

"Uhh, what are you—"

"Shh, I want to hear this."

Isaac stands, frowning at the TV.

"That's your school, isn't it?" Mulder asks, though he knows it is. He stood outside the building with Scully just a few days before, but now students are gathered around the entrance, teachers trying to cluster the kids together as the EMTs wheel out stretcher after stretcher. Five in total, the bodies too still and pale to be alive, a glimpse of blood splashed across white sheets.

For all his prior experience, Mulder flinches.

_Getting soft in your old age, G-man._

"Guess that suspension worked in your favor, huh?" he whispers, but the joke falls flat. Something tugs at his consciousness; empathy for the parents, tinged with relief that his own child isn't among the dead.

His throat constricts when he realizes he's come to see Isaac as a son rather than a charge.

_They targeted his school…_

Mulder turns to ask Isaac if he knows anything, but the boy is no longer behind him.

_Shit._

"Isaac? You OK?" He approaches the closed bedroom door.

"I'm fine."

"Are you—"

"I said I'm fine! Leave me alone!"

Mulder pauses, glances back at the TV, where the newscasters drone on.

_"…and authorities are conducting an investigation into possible contaminants at the school. It is yet to be determined whether they suspect foul play, but we haven't received an official statement…"_

"Alright. I'll, uh…I'll be outside," he mumbles, intent on returning to his office, the mess at his back already forgotten.

#

The distinctly feminine shape of her body under the blanket, the contours of her lips, her nose, the shock of stubborn, dark hair that obscures her face. The television is old and the video is grainy, but Isaac would recognize her anywhere.

_Alice._

His stomach lurches, threatening to turn him inside out. Mulder is still frowning at the report, concerned but oblivious.

Isaac makes a silent and shaky retreat to his room, pressing his back to the door as if to barricade himself inside. Mulder isn't far behind.

"Isaac? You OK?"

"I'm fine," he breathes through gritted teeth.

"Are you—"

"I said I'm fine! Leave me alone!"

He is anything but fine. He moves to the bed, dread washing over him.

_Don't let it be her. Please don't let it be Alice._

It doesn't register when Mulder tells him he'll be outside, nor does he hear the sound of the front door close.

He's concentrating. His head aches the way it used to when he was younger, and he stays like this for what feels like hours, rigid and focused. He reaches out, searching for her, picturing her face, recalling the lilt of her voice…but there's only static. She's too far away, or…

_…or she's not here at all._

And he knows at once this is the truth.

The black thoughts settle into their familiar corners, and he is rendered too weak to fight back. Images from his dreams, from his previous life, tumble over each other, entangled. He wields incredible power, but in this, he is helpless as a newborn.

_Why did she have to be so fucking persistent?_ he thinks, denial and blame coiling in the pit of his stomach._ Why did she—_

_Monster_, his mind whispers in a voice he'd almost forgotten, but it is no less cruel now than it was a year and a half ago, when it said the world would be better off without him.

He falls back onto the bed, staring hard at the ceiling until wisps of smoke trail from the tiles above. His skin is alight with a fever of loss, but all he can feel is cold.

#

The signal at the house is weak. Mulder walks to the end of the drive, holding the cell phone out like an old-fashioned television antenna. _Two bars should do it_, he thinks, marveling at how he used to take such service for granted. Out here in the middle of nowhere, it's a luxury.

Mulder had protested when Scully came home with the slim, metallic touch device. It was light, thin, a world apart from his old Motorola which had actual buttons instead of a cold glass pane.

He'd looked at her as though she'd brought home a portal to the otherworld, as though a simple flick of his finger across the screen might summon all the forces of the Consortium to their doorstep.

"Congratulations, Scully, you've just given the NSA an open invitation to spy on us."

She'd rolled her eyes, the same way she used to when she wanted to convey her deep disgust for one of his theories, even though this one isn't far off.

"The trac phones don't work out here, Mulder. It's one thing for two grown adults not to have one, but with him," she gestures toward Isaac's bedroom, "it's irresponsible not to have something for emergencies."

He'd agreed, albeit grudgingly, and she'd all but said "I told you so" the first time she caught him playing _Angry Birds_.

He remembers this exchange with the clarity of a person who can't easily forget. Today the memory only serves to make him more anxious to hear her voice.

He presses the first key, speed dial. Long before they were lovers, even when they were no more than partners, she's been his number 1.

#

"Dana? There's a call for you, line one."

She jerks awake to stare at the nurse who's materialized in the doorway of her office. She blinks once, twice, eyes heavy with sleep, having drifted off at her desk.

"Sorry to wake you, I thought—"

"No…no, it's fine. Thanks," she yawns, swiping at her eyes, a futile attempt to brush away the sleep. The phone is cool against her ear.

"What's up, doc?"

She closes her eyes, picturing him, building a mental image of his face from his voice, miles away but always with her.

"Mulder. It's late," she whispers, and though there's no accusation in her voice, he's immediately apologetic.

"Did I wake you?"

"Mmm. It's OK," she squints at her computer clock. "I needed to be up."

"Still on call?" he asks, and she knows by the tone of his voice he hasn't called for an idle chat, but the sound is comforting nonetheless. She lets herself drift to his familiar cadence.

"Yes," she sighs. "I'm here for the foreseeable future."

"Is it the virus?"

He's trying to sound cavalier about it, but she knows better.

"Mulder…we don't—"

"The guys sent me a video, Scully; now they're talking about it on the news," he pauses. "Why don't you come home?"

She swallows thickly, because this is the thing she wants more than anything, but she carries the weight of too many on her conscience. "I can't."

He sighs, an impatient huff. "Scully, you don't owe them anything. Come home."

"I can't," she repeats, closing her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. "We're under quarantine."

"You're what? Scully—"

"The CDC shut us down twelve hours ago."

"And you didn't think to tell me?" he asks, disbelief and anger warring for prominence on the other end of the phone.

"What good would it have done?"

She can picture his expression; set jaw, eyes closed. "Who got the feds involved?"

Her pause tells him exactly what he'd feared, but she needs to say the words aloud to remind herself that she's done the right thing. "I called the CDC."

Silence. She feels her resolve wavering. "The administration was going to sit on this, dozens of people could have—"

"You think the government is going to help?" he snaps. "Scully, they manufactured this thing. Remember Antarctica? You think the CDC didn't know about _that_?"

She closes her eyes, willing herself not to return his rant with one of her own. "Mulder, it's done. I'm not going to argue," she says. Her hand goes to the familiar spot at her left side, massaging the ache, absently running her fingers along the scar.

"Of all the times to play it by the book, Scully, this…this is—"

"It's done," she repeats more firmly, gritting her teeth against her partner's stubbornness, once again met with silence.

"They don't deserve you," he sighs finally, waving his solitary white flag.

"It's not about them, Mulder. I'm not a pathologist anymore, I'm a doctor. I took an oath. I owe it to these people to help if I can," she says. "If I can save one life, it makes this worth it."

"What about yours?" he whispers, but he knows she never counts herself.

"I'm fine, Mulder. I've shown no symptoms—"

"That you know of," he counters. "I don't need to be a doctor to see that this thing hits fast, and when it does, you're as good as dead."

"Trust me…I'm well aware of what the infection can do."

If it weren't for his steady breathing on the other end of the line, she might have thought he'd hung up.

"I know you are," he murmurs finally. "Christ. Just be safe."

"What did the Gunmen find?"

"They don't know for sure yet, but from what I've seen, it's not pretty. If this is Purity…or its mutated grandkid…I don't want to stick around to see what the next generation looks like."

She considers this, recalling how the black blood had coursed down the woman's chin, the way her bony hand gripped Scully's wrist. "Isaac? Does he know?"

There's a hitch in Mulder's breath. "I haven't told him anything he hasn't seen on TV."

"Is he OK, Mulder? Are you?"

Another pause, a moment too long for comfort, and the words come out in a tired rush. "The guys think this might have something to do with the project Isaac was part of. There may be a connection to Isaac's former doctor, Baray. We're looking into it."

"What? Oh, God…Mulder…"

"We're fine, Scully, he's fine," he mutters. "We just want you to come home."

A pause as her breathing turns ragged, pained. "I'll be there as soon as I can," she murmurs in a rush. "I have to go."

She hangs up before he can reply.

#

He stuffs the phone back in his pocket, troubled, footsteps crunching gravel on his way back to the house. The sky has turned gray and cold, and an early spring snow has begun to fall, an oddity for this time of year. Now it feels like a bad omen.

_Death, at a time when the world should be coming to life._

The house is warm and still, too quiet. He looks toward the boy's bedroom, the solid presence of the wall between them, a divide thicker than plaster and wood.

_And you're always standing on the wrong side._

"Hey, Isaac. You there?"

No response. He knocks once, twice, but stops short of turning the knob. Scully's words during their argument choose this moment to seat themselves firmly in his consciousness.

_Be a parent for once._

He presses his forehead to the door but makes no move to enter, torn between two worlds, neither of them within reach.

_Fuck. If I knew how, I would._

#

"Hey, Isaac. You there?"

Isaac closes his eyes, willing the man away. If he has to endure one drop, one iota of pity, he might go mad. She was his secret, a bright spot in the darkness. Without her, the world has gone black.

Eventually Isaac gets his wish; Mulder's steps are heavy as he retreats, but the tightness in Isaac's chest is unrelenting. Memory launches an assault, and every bone and muscle in his body aches, his blood throbs a familiar beat through his veins.

_Monster. Freak._

It's not memory, but a single wretched thought that deals the final blow.

_Why did she have to see me?_

The tears come, curling him like a burnt leaf in his bed, shivering with the force of his own sorrow.


	15. Chapter 15

MARCH 31, 2015

2:45 A.M.

SCULLY RESIDENCE

The door creaks open on tired hinges, where Isaac finds their bedroom tidy and dark. The bed is made, untouched for days; Mulder never sleeps here when the doc isn't home. He glimpses the shed's faint blue light glowing from the bedroom window.

A feverish chill ripples down Isaac's back, the sensation tinged with loneliness and another, more sinister feeling he can't place.

_A blanket…need a blanket._

The thermostat reads 72, but he hasn't been able to get warm since learning of Alice's death. The cold goes deeper than bone, deeper than marrow.

_Alice_, he thinks. She is forgotten and remembered in a vicious cycle. Every rediscovery is worse than the first, and he rubs non-existent tears from raw eyes that have all but dried up.

He's reaching for a quilt when he bumps the box on the top shelf. The lid slides to the floor, bringing with it a fluttering of pictures and papers. He frowns at a photograph that's landed at his feet, reaching to pick it up.

A young girl of twelve or thirteen, leaning over the back of a chair, wild red hair curling around her face. She's smiling at the camera, a look so genuine he can almost imagine her laughter.

He turns the photo over to read the unfamiliar handwriting on the back; _June 23, 1967: Melissa at Great Aunt Alice's._

_Alice_, he thinks, heart sinking in his chest like an anchor.

In a single-handed swipe, a futile attempt to banish her memory, he pulls down the rest of the box. Excitement sparks against his ribs in spite of his sorrow.

Sitting on top of the pile is a diary. It's flowery but worn, the pages yellowed with time. He almost tosses it aside, but it's flipped open to the middle where the binding has cracked, exposing a looping scrawl.

_They did more tests today._

He swallows. The curled paper reads like his childhood, and a few gingerly turned pages reveal its original owner.

_Samantha._

Mulder's memories are well guarded, but the photograph in his office is not. She is a demigod in his guardian's mind, as bright and untouchable as the sun; her life is a puzzle without corners or edges. He puts it aside, overwhelmed by its weight, heavy with memory.

_She would have been my aunt._

The thought is strange and sad, another missed connection in a series of many.

He finds what looks like a mind-twister or a magician's prop—two coins fused together in the middle. He turns the trinket in his fingers, testing its cool, coppery weight.

_Junk. A souvenir, maybe. Why would they keep it?_

There are stacks of photos and papers, layer after layer, like an archeological excavation.

Old pictures, a boy and a girl. The boy looks like Isaac, but with hazel eyes instead of blue.

A group of red-headed children laughing at the camera.

FBI badges with photos of the agents, fresh-faced and young, solemn.

There's a paper ribbon—a hospital bracelet marked _William F. Scully_—alongside a handful of baby pictures that must be his. The dates line up, but no matter how hard he stares at the photographs, there's no flutter of recognition or homecoming. He sets them down, a familiar disappointment pulling at his heart.

_I don't belong here._

More papers, Xeroxed copies of FBI files with large swaths of redacted text in black angry stripes.

_Alice would get a kick out of this stuff._

The innocent thought brings a fresh wave of grief. _Oh…Alice_. Tears prick at his eyes, and he blindly swipes through photographs, papers, and clippings, but no amount of ephemera can still the ache.

At the bottom of the box, there's a small, black velvet bag. He palms it, feeling its warm, slight mass in his hand, before untying the drawstring and shaking the contents into his palm.

He blinks at the rings, two simple gold bands.

_They never said they were—_

"I never gave them to her," Mulder interrupts, startling Isaac, so absorbed in his research he doesn't hear the hum of the man's thoughts.

The box slips off his lap, its remaining contents scattering to the floor. He kneels, scrambling to put everything back.

"It was an accident, I—"

"It's alright," Mulder says, "it wasn't exactly well hidden."

"What is this stuff?"

Mulder shrugs. "We didn't take much, there wasn't time," he murmurs. He leans down, picks up a photo, studying it with tired eyes.

They haven't talked about the years in between, and Isaac hasn't asked. Their relationship is precarious enough.

Isaac looks down at the rings in his palm as Mulder approaches; he's quiet, almost wistful.

"I put them in one of the few places she'd never think to look…in the past."

"So you're not…?"

"No. Never thought we needed to, I guess. Or, she didn't." He smiles wryly. "Scully's not much for grand symbolic gestures."

Isaac snorts, and he picks up a photograph of the agents outside a nondescript gray building, both draped in dark coats, looking at something together. "What was she like?"

The question catches Mulder off guard, and he takes a seat at the edge of the bed, biting his lip.

"She was…she was everything I wasn't," he says, unaware of how his face softens when he talks about her, the laugh lines around his eyes smoothing. "Smart. Skeptical. We argued about everything, but it was something, watching her work. Still is," he qualifies, "but we were different then."

Isaac doesn't say anything as he considers the artifacts of another time, feeling the burden of his words to Scully hanging over them.

"The X-Files hardened her…everything that happened to her, to us…it changed things," he murmurs. "I don't think either of us realized how much until you came along…or until she lost you."

_But she didn't lose me…she gave me up._

Isaac's voice is diluted in their silent circle. "I guess I fucked everything up, huh?"

Mulder shakes his head, hands clasped between his knees. "No. No, you...you have no idea how much she wanted you," he whispers. "I don't think she ever forgave herself."

Isaac goes quiet, staring at one of the baby pictures. Suddenly the reasoning behind his seemingly innocent question becomes clear. He wants to know how one person could create another who is completely different in every respect.

_Born from opposites._

The thought comes from nowhere, errant and oddly comforting.

Mulder clears his throat. "Her dad was military, you know. Your grandfather? If she's hard on you, you can blame him for that. She expects no less than perfection from herself. You're part of a family tradition of good Catholic guilt. Unfortunately for you," he continues, smiling a little, "you're also half Mulder. Which means you're as imperfect as they come."

Isaac's face falls. He'd hoped his desire hadn't been so obvious…for her to look at him as more than a piece of her past gone awry, a great guilty weight.

"But," Mulder continues gently, "she's put up with me for years, and she's still here. So, you and I, we must be doing something right. That's the best I can figure."

"Did you ask her?" He's fingering the rings again, brow furrowed and pale.

Mulder looks down. "I meant to. But I'm not even sure she'd take me up on the offer at this point."

"She'll say yes," Isaac fires back.

Mulder frowns to cover a secret rush of pleasure at the thought. "No peeking."

Isaac shrugs, murmuring, "I don't have to read her mind."

The way he says it, a statement of simple fact, leaves Mulder quiet. Why should he be surprised? He and Scully have always been obvious to everyone but them.

"Well…thanks for the vote of confidence."

"Where is she?"

Mulder blinks, and Isaac knows without asking that he's considering bending the truth, is relieved when he doesn't.

"She's at the hospital, under quarantine. Apparently this infection, whatever it is, is worse than they thought."

Isaac asks the question for Mulder's sake; he already knows the answer. "The thing at school? Is it bad?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it's bad," Mulder says, wiping his hands across his face, haggard from fatigue. "I think you were right, when you said things were changing."

Thinking about the virus reminds Isaac of Alice; her smile, her voice…her soft lips pressed against his for that one endless moment.

_Her hand, limp and drawn with blue veins, peeking out from under the sheet…_

His head swims with fatigue. Suddenly this room is too small, the walls too close, smothering. He shoves the box to the side. "Sorry I snooped," he mumbles, but he's not sorry at all.

"Suit yourself. For what it's worth, it's yours, too."

Isaac swallows, aware that his biological parents have given him the chance to be part of something; a family, a history, a place.

He's just not sure it's a gift he can accept.

"I'm gonna go," he mutters. He grabs the extra quilt and bypasses Mulder without looking back, heading for the safety of his room, where he shuts the door against his complicated past.


	16. Chapter 16

MARCH 31, 2015

4:43 A.M.

The darkness finds Mulder at his desk, screen glowing eerily in the pre-dawn light. Attempts to sleep are futile, his intuition gnawing away at his subconscious like an itch that can't be scratched. The shed is dark no matter the time of day—like a black hole, it's easy to get sucked in.

They've released the names of the victims from Isaac's school. It's no one he recognizes, four boys and a girl, their faces flash over the streaming video broadcast.

_They might as well be infants._

The girl's eyes are beautiful, bright and haunting, enough to make him wince, but his sympathy is once again overshadowed by a feeling of immense relief that it's not his kid's face on the screen. Relief mixed with a deep-seated fear.

_Because it's not just them._

The reports are coming in faster than Mulder can read them; victims with symptoms as far west as Texas, along the east coast, and across both borders. Major cities are reporting new cases in droves, with hospitals at capacity. Chicago, Boston, New York...

_New York..._

His chair swivels with a tired groan, almost of its own volition. The photo from the case file lies at his feet, the boy's bloated corpse leering up at him, the gloss of the paper catching the light...waiting...

_I wonder…_

He leans down and picks it up, once again struck at how much the image reminds him of Isaac.

_Not exactly a riveting connection. They're almost the same age._

But looking closer, there's something else.

_Damn…damn. Scully would have seen it._

It's subtle, almost covered by the discoloring effects of prolonged submersion in the polluted river, but the boy's stomach is bruised. Badly, as a matter of fact.

_Just like in the video…_

He frowns, searching for the accompanying case report, finding it in the corner behind the trash can. He shakes off the dust and begins to read the medical examiner's report for the second time. It's the same information, but something about the signature at the bottom of the document rings a bell.

_N. Hagernan._

He turns back to the computer and pulls up the list of names from the project, though he's read it so many times, he knows what he'll find.

_Norman Hagernan, M.D. Jesus._

He sits back, hand to the back of his neck, where the muscles are iron-tight.

_The project...the virus..._

He wishes Scully were here. She'd be able to fill in the gaps, correct his wild assumptions with hard logic, replace his missing pieces. Tonight, she is his missing piece, and he feels it acutely.

He swivels his chair, facing the wall papered with clippings, searching. His sister's picture hangs off to one side, tacked up amongst the few pieces of ephemera he salvaged from his mother's house after her death. His eyes linger on Samantha for a second before settling on a different picture, this one black and white and yellow with age, two men standing with the water at their backs.

_Was this what you were trying to save us from, Dad?_

He hears his father's reply in his head, as brutal as it is unyielding. The only remaining memories he has of Bill Mulder are tinged with regret and soaked in alcohol. Over time, the good ones have faded away, but his voice lives on.

_You were always too late, Fox. Looking for the end of the world with your nose stuck up some extraterrestrial ass, when the answer is right in front of your face._

_You're wrong_, Mulder thinks numbly, though he knows it's futile; he's never been able to silence that inner running monologue. Even in death—especially in death—he doesn't measure up.

The phone rings, its shrill, angry wail jolting him out of his thoughts. Only Scully or the Gunmen would call at this hour, and either is preferable to the drone of a long-dead drunk.

Byers doesn't bother with a greeting. "Mulder, we found something."

Mulder glances at his computer, where the search engine spits out another handful of new reports. Some clever journalist has coined the term "bleeders" to describe the infected, due to the violent nature of their deaths, the expulsion of blood in their last gruesome moments.

He swallows hard. "I hope you've got more than a nice pair of double-D's this time, boys."

"From what we can tell, Baray and Kent were brought into the project for their immunology expertise. They theorized that their failure to produce a healthy clone was the result of an autoimmune response to the alignment of the chromosomes at the time of mitosis."

Mulder rubs his left temple, grimacing. "In English, Byers."

"Isaac is the computer," Langly says, his voice even more nasal than usual over the speaker, "and these two were trying to hack him. Your kid is something else, Mulder."

Mulder snorts, thinking of a certain pencil embedded in the drywall of his former den. "I could have told you that."

"The same gene that prevents Isaac from being cloned could make him vulnerable to the virus. Kent was close to working around the problematic gene when he dropped out of the project."

"Why?"

"No one knows. Maybe he disagreed on the extent of the research, the questionable morality of using human subjects without their consent. Maybe he suddenly grew a conscience, decided to give his talents to more philanthropic endeavors—"

"But it's more likely he made better moolah in the private sector," Langly interrupts, "Uncle Sam doesn't pay for shit, no matter how brilliant you are."

"Preaching to the choir, Langly."

"Baray continued working with the project up until about two years ago."

Mulder closes his eyes, leans back in his seat with a tired sigh. "That's when they gave up…when we found Isaac," he says. "What does this have to do with the infection?"

"That's what we don't know," Byers says, "but given their respective areas of expertise, and Kent's voice on that video clip? Maybe they're targeting the project's victims to cover their tracks…"

"…or maybe some idiot in a white coat stuck his fingers in the wrong petrie dish," Frohicke rumbles. "But if the goal was to keep your kid from contracting the infection, there's a chance they were working on a cure."

"So where do we find them?"

There's a pause before Langly fills in the gap. "Baray's dead, Mulder. Dude was shot at his apartment, night before last."

Mulder's stomach drops._ Fuck._ "And Kent?"

"I managed to dig up a mailing address in D.C., but it's just a P.O. box—"

"What is it?" Mulder demands, cradling the phone on his shoulder, scrabbling through the clutter for a pen as Byers reads it off.

"What are you going to do, Mulder?"

He grimaces, turning back to the screen, thinking of his partner and her former admonition. "I have a monster to chase."

#

6:30 A.M.

He stares at the computer after they've hung up, until his eyes are sand-coated glass and his jaw feels like it's been wired shut.

_Getting too old for this shit, Fox._

He's already forming a plan. He'll wake Isaac, and they'll pack. They'll get Scully from the hospital—_even if I have to sedate her and carry her out_, he thinks—and they'll drive north, with a detour to check in on their new friend, Kent. Then they'll head into the woods until this thing, whatever it is, blows over.

_Guess we're taking that family vacation after all, ha-ha._

He stumbles from the shed and wanders toward the farmhouse with his hands jammed into his pockets, the early light casting long shadows, gnarled fingers gripping the ground. It's supposed to be a beautiful day, March's lions becoming lambs, but the sun's warmth is fleeting at best and Mulder shivers.

_How do you run from an enemy you can't see?_

He's still brooding as he reaches the steps, the creak of the old porch swing on rusty chains giving the otherwise bright spring morning an ominous soundtrack.

_Should oil that_, he thinks absently, walking into the house, which is slow to warm despite his efforts to seal its hidden cracks.

It's a different sound that catches his attention, sending a chill down his spine, one that has little to do with the temperature. It's a sound he's heard too many times over the course of the night, newscasts riddled with its hollow echoes in the background.

But the television is a silent, empty eye at the far end of the living room. There's no one here except…

_Isaac. Coughing._

Mulder swallows, stumbling over his own feet toward the sound of his son's labored breathing. He remembers Byers' words from their conversation, _he may be vulnerable_.

_No_, he thinks, heart sinking in his chest. _No, no, not now…_

He finds the boy curled on the floor of the bathroom. His face is pale, his hair unkempt and wild along his temples.

"Hey, buddy," Mulder says, reaching down to gently help the boy to a sitting position. He's grown several inches in the last two years, he's heavier than Mulder remembers from when they first met, from when he'd carried him, so slight in his arms. Now he feels solid, more like a young man than a child. _When did that happen?_ he wonders dully.

"Isaac, can you hear me? Can you talk?"

_Shit. Think, Fox._ _Ambulance?_

No good. They're too far out, and it's unlikely any are free. He'll drive, but where? The nearest hospital is Scully's, and they're under quarantine.

_There's another hospital. General something…Jesus, you should know this._

The hollow, reedy sound of the boy's voice fills him with equal relief and dread.

"Don't feel good," Isaac croaks.

"Yeah…yeah, I can see that. We're going to the truck, I'm going to get you to a hospital."

"Mmmph," Isaac mumbles. "Head hurts."

"I know, buddy, stay with me. Keep talking so I know you're alive, Isaac."

"Don't wanna talk."

Even in sickness—_more like death_, a cruel internal voice rings out—the boy is contrary. Mulder takes this as a good sign.

"Yeah…well, I don't…care," he huffs, wrapping his arms under the boy's armpits and hoisting him to his feet. "C'mon, Isaac, work with me here."

"Hurts," the boy mumbles, but he's standing on his own, barely. Mulder supports him at the waist and steers them toward the door, willing his knee not to lock up.

He loads Isaac into the cab of the truck, and the boy's head lolls back against the seat. His forehead is hot to the touch, his hands like ice. Mulder reaches behind the seat and grabs a blanket from the floor, tucking it around him as he opens his eyes to look into Mulder's own.

_I should have been with him._

"I wasn't here anyway," the boy says, causing Mulder's head to snap up as Isaac continues, "You didn't know. S'not your fault."

Mulder's throat tightens. It's never his fault, and yet somehow, the past refuses to release its grip on the people he loves.

"No peeking," he mutters, but he doesn't mean it. "Where'd you go?" he asks, climbing into the truck and starting it, thankful the engine turns over without protest.

_Keep him talking._

"Just the woods," Isaac says quietly.

"What's in the woods?"

"We hung out there sometimes."

_We?_

"Alice."

Mulder's brow creases. He tries to remember if Isaac mentioned a friend in the past, but nothing comes up, especially not a girl. That would have caught his attention. But there's something familiar about the name.

_Alice…Alice? She was the…_

"The girl who died?" he blurts out. "She was your friend?"

Isaac's silence confirms the truth, and Mulder is struck dumb. He clears his throat, gaze shifting between his son and the road in front of them.

"Was she…alive…before you met her, Isaac?"

Isaac has enough strength to roll his eyes, as if this is the most ridiculous thing he's ever heard, from the kid who can embed a pencil in the wall with the flick of a finger. "God, yes. She wasn't a fucking ghost."

Mulder turns his attention back to the road, chagrined.

_Some father you are, Fox_, the voice in his head broods. _His friend dies, and you didn't even know her. What else don't you know?_

"Nothing," Isaac says, not missing a beat, causing Mulder to turn to him again, irritation flaring at this second intrusion, but it passes quickly.

_He's so damn pale._

"Hold on," he mutters through gritted teeth, not daring to say more.

#

The hospital—_Mercy General, on outer Main_, he remembers as they take the exit, Scully had a conference there once—is eerily quiet. There are no ambulances, no strobe lights or sirens, no medical personnel rushing to aid. The building is lit, but the security booth is empty, the doors locked.

_They've already given up_, Mulder thinks, rushing from the truck. His fists bang against the glass entrance.

"Hey! Anybody!"

He turns to the right, peering into what looks like a waiting room; some people are sitting, hunched over, while others are curled on the floor. None of them stir as his palms smack the glass over and over, and slowly it dawns on him that they can't hear him.

_They're all dead._

"No," he whispers to himself, casting a sideways glance at Isaac, who's slipped down the wall, propped up against the ER doors. "No, dammit! No!"

He scans the room again, pressing his forehead against the cold glass, looking for a sign of life. He turns back to the security booth, desperate, and that's when he spots her—a figure behind the registration desk, peering out from around a door.

_A nurse…alive._

He catches her eye, and resumes banging on the glass. "Hey! We need help out here!"

For a moment he thinks she's going to turn away, to leave Isaac to die, and his panic is a raw, cutting edge. But the woman approaches the glass doors with guarded eyes before holding up one finger._ Wait._

Mulder swallows, nods, breathing hard. _Whatever, lady, just help him._

She walks back toward the security booth, reaches inside, and he hears the mechanical _whir-click_ of the door lock.

"He's sick, he's—"

She turns back to him, but there's no surprise on her face, only a resigned pain that makes Mulder's stomach coil like a spring.

"Sick," she says wearily, "just like everyone else."

"It hasn't been long," he lies. "He still has a chance. You need to help him."

The nurse sighs, as if she's heard this story countless times and knows the ending by heart, but she re-locks the door behind them. "This way."

Mulder fidgets in the chair beside Isaac as she takes the boy's blood pressure, heartbeat, and listens to his lungs with the kind of no-nonsense speed Mulder associates with assembly line manufacturing. He watches her hands at the boy's throat, the quick, perfunctory squeezes of her fingers on the bulb.

"Any other symptoms? Dizziness? Shortness of breath?" Her voice is flat, almost bored, but perhaps that's the shock. He wonders how many people's deaths she's witnessed in the last two days.

_Hundreds at a hospital this size._

He glances out the door but there are no others rushing to join them, to see the latest victim. The inner hall is as silent as the waiting room.

Isaac shakes his head weakly at her questioning, looking to Mulder, but tonight they're equally powerless.

The nurse purses her lips, before turning to a cabinet and withdrawing a syringe.

Mulder realizes he should be asking questions, making sure Isaac gets the appropriate treatment—it's what Scully would do.

"What are you giving him?"

"An antiviral. Oseltamivir, more commonly known as Tamiflu. We've caught it early, but…"

"But what?"

She narrows her eyes, gently flicking the needle. "It's temporary."

"Temporary?"

"Mmm," she affirms, turning to Isaac to soothe, "Little pinch, now."

"You mean you've never seen anyone come back from this…don't you?"

He's staring at her intently, but she doesn't answer; she doesn't have to. _Why else would the hospital be locked down?_

Mulder's knee bounces in an anxious dance, before he finally averts his gaze to Isaac, whose head is turned away, eyes shut tight until she finishes administering the shot.

_Coming here was a death sentence._

"So," he says, biting his thumbnail, "will a doctor be in to take a look, or what?"

The nurse turns away. "I'm afraid I'm it, Mr…"

"Mulder," he says. "Call me Mulder."

"Well, Mulder. There is no doctor here; just me. I'm the only one left."

#

10:37 A.M.

"You're not sick," she says, matter-of-fact, as they watch Isaac drift in and out of consciousness. The Tamiflu brings his fever down, but there's flaming color in his cheeks, a startling contrast to his blue-white skin.

The nurse, he learns her name is Eileen, has brought coffee from the cafeteria. It's the only thing the hospital serves now, besides soda and chips. Vending machines have the advantage of immunity.

Mulder takes another sip; the coffee is bitter, watery, fitting.

"You look well enough yourself," he returns, raising an eyebrow over the flimsy paper cup.

She shrugs, her eyes are dark, distant. "I'm not sure if it's good luck or bad, to be left behind, but we're all infected. Some just take longer than others," she whispers. "The antivirals slow the process for some. Your son's responding well…but it's only a matter of time. I'd suggest you pray, but you don't look like the praying type."

Mulder might have been offended, but she's got him pegged. Scully would pray, if worse came to worse. Mulder prefers to spend his last hours cursing at the sky. He's done it before.

She takes his silence to mean she's hit the nail on the head. "That's OK. Neither am I," she says with a sad, wry smile. "Not anymore."

Mulder can't take his eyes off Isaac as she talks.

"None of us realized what was happening until it was too late," she's talking, her voice hollow, flat as a broken drum. "The first one died six days ago, I think…a man, late fifties, no other symptoms but the cough. There was a lot of blood. Then suddenly every bed was full and the waiting room was overflowing. One would die, only to have three more start coughing…"

She closes her eyes, head swaying to an invisible rhythm.

"My super, Dr. Brennan, started convulsing in the middle of an exam. Scared the shit out of me, and the little girl she was treating. Both were dead within twenty-four hours."

_Jesus._

"There were rumors that someone had targeted the hospital, but then the news started reporting on similar attacks in the big cities…New York City, Philadelphia, D.C. It wasn't just us.

"I went home in the middle of a shift. Just walked out, went back to my apartment. I thought…I don't know what I was thinking," she whispers, suddenly agitated. "I guess I wasn't, I don't even remember what I did. I think I made toast," she laughs suddenly, barking into the empty room, making Mulder wince. "But by the time I came back…there was no one. Most of the last patients were my friends, colleagues. I watched them die."

Mulder swallows hard, wondering how many similar stories will be told in the coming weeks and months, how many lives will be lost. Through the years of waiting and watching, he'd silently prepared for war, but this isn't a war.

_It's a goddamned massacre._

He swallows. "I need to, uh, make a call. Could you keep an eye on him?"

She nods; the heavy door closes behind him, and he leans against it.

_Scully. Scully needs to know._

He pulls out the cell phone, ironically grateful for its slick metal weight, for its tenuous connection to his partner. He doesn't expect her to pick up, but she does. Her voice is raw, thin, and Mulder feels his heart skip a beat.

_Shit, she's sick, too._

"Scully."

He takes a deep breath, exhales. "Scully, it's me."

"Mulder. Hi," she whispers, sounding distracted.

"You sound…are you…are you sick?" He grips the phone, knuckles white, waiting for the answer.

"No…no, I haven't had any symptoms. Why, are you?"

His heart relaxes its grip, he closes his eyes and sinks back against the wall. "I'm fine," he whispers. "I'm glad you're OK."

"I'm fine, Mulder." There's a concerned pause. "Have you found something?"

"No," he says, his voice raw. "I, um," is all he can manage, his eyes close and he presses the back of his skull into the hard wood of the door, but the words remain beyond his reach.

_Our son is dying, Scully. He's sick. He's sick, and I should have been there, I should have known. You were right, I have no idea what I'm doing, and now he's dying, and I'm sorry._

"Mulder? What's wrong?" He's waited too long, the silence is damning.

"It's Isaac…"

Her voice is a razor, cutting down his defenses, the only person who can open him up and expose his heart with just a word. Her panic sucks all the air out of the room. When she falls, he goes down with her.

"What happened? Tell me."

He grits his teeth, biting off the words. "He's…I found him on the floor."

She imagines the worst; there are tears in her voice when she finds her breath. "No—"

"We're at Mercy General, but it's a goddamned morgue. There's no one…they've got him on something, an antiviral—"

"He's alive?" she whispers. "Oh, thank God. I thought you were going to say—" but she can't say it.

"He's sick, Scully."

"I…I'll be there as soon as I can."

"No, don't. I don't want you to see him like this."

_I don't want you to see me like this_, he thinks.

"Mulder," her voice cracks in disbelief, "he's our son, if he's…if he's sick—"

"Scully, the guys found one of the scientists responsible for this thing. They might have a cure. It's not much, but it's a lead, it's something."

There's a skeptical pause. "And you're going to find him."

It's a statement, not a question; she knows him too well.

"I don't have a choice."

"Mulder…you can't just…leave."

"I can't sit here and watch him die," he says, the last syllable like a gunshot. He closes his eyes against his own words, the first time either one dares say it aloud.

_Dying. He's dying._

"No," she whispers, "Mulder, the CDC—"

"Doesn't know its head from its ass," he spits, with a level of venom he doesn't intend for her. "Sorry," he mutters. "Sorry, I'm just—I can't do this, Scully. I can't lose him."

When she speaks again, her voice barely registers above a whisper.

"What do we know for sure?" She's had this conversation with herself hundreds of times in the last two days, but she doesn't have Mulder's imagination. "It's viral, fast-acting. It appears to be airborne, although no one has confirmed that for sure…given the infection rate and spread, it's the only form of transmission that makes sense."

"Some people aren't sick. There's a nurse here…"

"There are a few here, too," she says. "We haven't admitted any new patients in the last 24 hours."

"The nurse said some drug—"

"Tamiflu."

"Yeah, that. She said it helps."

"Somewhat," Scully agrees, "but the virus adapts. Except no virus I know of can mutate so drastically within days, let alone hours. I've been trying to get the Disease Control liaison to work with me, but their people aren't saying much. Our facilities are archaic, but they've sent samples back to Atlanta; if this is a mutated strain of an existing pathogen, they'll know by tomorrow. If not…"

He shakes his head. _Tomorrow is too far away._

"They're not going to find anything, Scully. You know it, and I know it. What we're dealing with isn't documented in any of the medical texts, and they want to keep it that way."

"Mulder, there's no proof of—"

"Why Isaac, Scully? Why him, and not us?" he demands, pinching the bridge of his nose as he paces the empty hall outside their son's room.

She doesn't have an answer.

He takes a deep breath. "What if…what if the virus isn't new?"

"You're going to have to give me more than that, Mulder."

"What if immunity is the result of exposure to the virus at a different stage of its life? If some smallpox vaccinations contained fragments of the deactivated virus, or if someone was exposed to the original virus, or hell, even stung by a bee…it could explain why we haven't been affected," he says, still pacing, his mind churning. "Did you get the results of the autopsy on your first patient?"

There's a pause. "No, the CDC appropriated the morgue. But Mulder—"

"Can you get to the body?" There's budding excitement in his voice now.

"I can try, but—"

"The answers will be in the victims, Scully. You have to get to that body and examine it."

"Mulder, we don't know for certain that this is the same virus we were exposed to. The only way to confirm is an antibody titer. Our lab doesn't have the equipment, nor do we have time to—"

He's barely listening, talking more to himself than her. "Byers said something about how Isaac's DNA left him vulnerable…if they were working on a vaccine…"

"Mulder, I—"

"I know it's a stretch…call it a hunch. Humor me," he says thickly.

She goes quiet.

"Scully?"

A soft sigh. "I'm here."

Another pause. Neither wants to let go.

"Scully," he whispers, voice catching, willing her to understand, "I have to know I did everything I could."

"I know," she replies. "You go. I'll…I'll get the autopsy results, then come straight to the hospital. Is Isaac safe?"

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, he's safe."

"Mulder?"

"Yeah."

"I…be careful," she says finally, the words layered and rich with their shared, secret language.

"I know," he whispers into the phone as the connection is closed, still tasting the lie on his tongue.

_Safe._

The word doesn't mean anything to him anymore.

#

He holds his breath long after the call has ended, the mint green walls and smell of antiseptic as unforgiving as his memories, thinking of a time when a place like this was just another mirage in the desert of their runaway lives, a necessity that remained out of reach.

They were living out of a weekly-rate motel in Arkansas. No amount of hand sanitizer could compete with the bugs breeding in some of the back-country's fine dining establishments, and Mulder had picked up a bad case of strep.

With no insurance and no way for him to see a doctor—a licensed one, at least—he'd made do with Tylenol and tea and his partner's careful tending, until the razors in his throat subsided, until the fever broke and left him shivering.

He'd awoken in the dark, missing Scully's warmth on the other side of the bed. He found her in the cramped bathroom, sitting on the edge of the chipped fiberglass tub with her head in her hands.

"It's just strep, doc." He was trying to save face, but the sheen of cold sweat on his bare shoulders and the whistle in his throat told a different story.

She'd looked up, glaring at him with eyes that could cut glass, before standing and grabbing a washcloth from the towel rack.

"Today it's strep throat, Mulder, but tomorrow it could be a compound fracture, or a concussion…or worse," she'd growled, running water, wringing out the cloth with a sharp twist. "You should get back to bed."

Too weak to protest, he'd collapsed onto the worn polyester duvet. His head throbbed, but he'd batted her hand away when she sat down beside him and held out the cool washcloth. He was a terrible patient, but she had years of practice.

"We're not young," she'd sighed, speaking softly this time, and he'd actually worked up the energy to take offense, grumbling something to the effect of youth being overrated.

"Maybe it is," she said, turning the cloth over in her hands, "but your health isn't."

The precarious nature of their situation lingered long after Mulder healed. It became the impetus for finding a permanent home. He'd argued against it at the time, though now he can't imagine why—what part of that life was he so reluctant to leave behind? The living accommodations weren't doing them any favors.

No, their situation wasn't enviable, but he was certain of one terrifying thing: The moment they stepped back into anything resembling a normal life was the moment Scully would realize she'd made a mistake.

He was a fugitive, but she was not. Why should she choose to live like one? Why would she stay with Fox Mulder when she could have a home, a career, and a family that wasn't tethered to a conspiracy that destroyed everything it touched?

It was easier living day to day, motel to cheap motel, because he knew what the stakes were, what to expect. He wasn't sure he could go back to the real world. That world made it clear he was no longer welcome within its boundaries.

Tonight, standing outside Isaac's hospital room, he's not sure any of them are.

#

Eileen excuses herself, slipping out of the room like a shadow as soon as Mulder returns. He wonders how much of the conversation she heard, then decides it doesn't matter.

_We're all in the same boat now._

He pulls up a chair beside Isaac, relieved to see the boy's eyes open and lucid.

"Hey, kid."

"Hey." Isaac's voice is thready, gravel against ice.

"Listen, Isaac," he begins, feeling his throat constrict. "There's something I need to do."

Isaac is staring at him with resigned stoicism. There are no tears, no plaintive goodbyes, only stony determination.

_Scully looked that way when she was dying, too._

He lowers his head, blinking back tears. It has never been more clear that the baby his partner gave up and the boy who lies in front of him are two different people. What happened in between caused a hardness in Isaac, an inky black stone that Mulder will never be able to crack.

_You may never get to try if you don't get your ass moving, Fox._

"There's a chance we can beat this thing…but I need to meet with someone in D.C. A doctor."

He doesn't tell the boy that the chances are small, that the meeting is less an arrangement and more a hope and a prayer, but Isaac doesn't need him to speak it aloud. He's too weak to shut out the thoughts, and Mulder vibrates with a dread that makes his head ache.

When Isaac doesn't respond, Mulder reaches out to take the boy's hand in a rare moment of connection. "I'm sorry about your friend."

Isaac jerks back at the mention of Alice, glaring with a haunted look Mulder has seen too often in his own reflection. As one who is an expert in blaming himself, it's not surprising Isaac suffers the same undeserved guilty conscience.

_Of all the things I could have passed on…_

"Isaac…" he begins, "you told me in the truck this isn't my fault…but it's not yours either."

The boy snorts in response, and Mulder clears his throat. "There was a time when I thought I'd pay any price to find what I was looking for, that no cost was too great. Then Scully was taken…she got sick…she lost her daughter…and by the time I thought to ask myself if it was worth it, it was too late," he says, nipping at the pad of his thumb, his teeth leaving nervous indentations in the calloused flesh.

Something shifts between them as Mulder talks. Isaac's eyes are shining pools, swirled with feverish hurt.

"You lose sight of what you have when you focus on what you've lost," Mulder whispers. "I did that with Scully, for a long time. I did that with you."

Isaac blinks, and maybe it's a trick of the light, but Mulder thinks he sees the trace of a tear disappear under the boy's chin.

"Your friend got sick, but it wasn't your fault. Your dad, your mom…they weren't your fault, either," he says. "You probably don't believe that now, but someday I hope you will."

The silence is painful, uncomfortably full.

"Go," the boy chokes out, "I'll be fine."

_Just like Scully_, Mulder thinks._ She was always fine, too._

He sets his jaw, squeezing Isaac's hand until his fingers ache. "You will," he replies, as if saying the words can make him believe them.

#

He finds Eileen standing outside the door.

"You're leaving," she says matter-of-factly, crossing her arms over her chest. "What do you expect to find out there?"

He presses his lips together, avoiding the question, because he doesn't have the answer. "Take care of him. He's…he's important," Mulder says, unable to let himself speak the truth: That aside from Scully, Isaac is the one thing that came from their sullied past that's worth anything, shoebox full of memories be damned.

"What else would I do?" she mutters drily, then softens. "The Tamiflu is helping; it should give you a day, maybe more. But hurry," she finishes, leaving the implications of a late return hanging between them.

"I will," he says, digging into his pocket and pulling out a scrap of paper. "This is my cell," he says, scribbling down the number, handing her the crumpled slip. "Call me if anything changes."

The morning air is sharp and empty, a damp slap to the face pointing him north. His words to Isaac play themselves over in his mind as he takes a reluctant leave from his son for the second time in his life.

_…by the time I thought to ask myself if it was worth it, it was too late._


	17. Chapter 17

MARCH 31, 2015

9:33 P.M.

OUR LADY OF SORROWS

For the first time in years, she steps into the autopsy bay and feels out of place. Death hadn't bothered her until she was faced with the task of keeping people alive. It used to be a puzzle, a mystery to be solved; now it's the enemy.

The enemy is stronger than ever tonight.

"Hello?"

She's here to follow up on the autopsy of her patient zero, but neither the morgue attendant nor the CDC liaison are here. Most of the hospital staff mysteriously disappeared after the quarantine went into effect. What's more disturbing is that the CDC doesn't seem to care. The lockdown is for show, leading her to wonder if Mulder was right after all.

_They knew about the infection..._

She opens her mouth to call out again, then thinks better of it. There's no one here tonight. Instead, grabs a pair of latex gloves from a nearby shelf.

_Do the autopsy yourself if you have to._

The lockers on the far wall are full, but Mrs. Dunner's body is nowhere to be found. She's begun to think the CDC might have taken the corpse when she opens the cold storage freezer.

_Jesus._

Her back prickles with gooseflesh, and she has to lean against the doorway to gather herself. The bodies are stacked as much as seven high, lining the small enclosure like linen-wrapped firewood.

_Some of them aren't even wrapped…_

A young woman's arm hangs out from the pile in a state of rigor, blue and lifeless; the sight of her curled fingers make Scully's otherwise iron stomach turn.

_Some of them are so small...oh._

Her vision swims. There's blood on the floor, black and shimmering in the fluorescent light.

_Find her._

It takes all her strength to move the wrapped bundles, to unravel their cocoons of death one by one. Each time she's greeted by empty eyes, the same gray-blue pallor, often flecks of dried blood. She steels herself as she unwraps each white sheet, but it's not the physical manifestation of the virus that spooks her.

_No one will return to claim these people. No one will mourn over them or bring flowers to their graves. No one will tell their stories to great grandchildren, because there will be no great grandchildren to tell._

Thinking of grandchildren reminds her of Isaac, and it becomes harder not to see the contours of his face beneath each shroud of death.

_Too many years cultivating that bedside manner, your clinical detachment has gone to shit. Focus, Dana._

She finds her at the back of the room, third from the bottom. Scully's hair sticks to her damp skin, a fine sheet of cold sweat across her brow as she lifts her from the pile. The woman's body is light across her shoulder, and it slides easily onto the gurney.

Mrs. Dunner had been one of the first; the body is clean, all the blood has been wiped away, but it's clear the virus continues its work in death. Her veins are black, rising outward from the skin, bulging along the woman's neck. Scully reaches out to touch them, then withdraws her hand and grabs another glove, remembering her own words.

_Double up. You can't be too careful with this one._

She winces as she unwraps the sheet fully. The corpse's abdomen is distended and bruised, while the rest of her skin is gray-white, almost translucent. It's obvious no autopsy was performed, but the state of the body's decay is too advanced to match the cause of death.

She finds a recorder on one of the counters, her voice trembling slightly until she finds a comfortable rhythm.

"Victim is female, eighty-three, weighing approximately…uh…one-hundred-twenty-two pounds. Initial external examination reveals what appears to be clotting or an obstruction in the carotid artery," she pauses, gently pushing against the skin of the woman's neck, surprised to find it firm under the waxy tip of a gloved finger. "It's hard to the touch. There is what appears to be…a large contusion on the solar plexus, starting about three inches below the navel…up to the sternum. Swelling…possibly trapped gas, or a massive internal hemorrhage in the abdominal cavity…which is also hard to the touch," she swallows thickly. "I'll begin the internal exam here."

Scully is running her gloved fingers along the surface of the bruise, ready to begin the Y-incision, when the skin arches up to meet her fingers. She jumps back with a startled shriek.

_She's in full rigor, there's no way…_

The skin just below the woman's breastbone undulates, rippling and stretching taut, before settling back into place. It happens again, the movement more subtle but no less terrifying.

She fumbles and nearly drops the recorder, hits the red button with shaking fingers.

"It appears…there's something…moving…under the breastbone," she rasps, her mouth dry. "Possibly some kind of parasite or…or another organism. I'm going to cut into the body."

As she reaches for a scalpel, intent on revealing the disruption beneath the woman's pale gray skin, something clicks into place. The steel blade clatters to the floor.

She turns back to the freezer, back to the bodies stacked along the walls. Hesitating over the first one, her hands tremble as they unwrap the gauzy fabric, except this time she starts from the middle.

Each one has the same telltale bruising at the abdomen, some darker and larger than others. The skin of the third victim ripples as she lifts the sheet, and her heart hammers in time with the movement. She's seen enough to know what's happening, though her logical mind doesn't want to accept it.

_This is how it begins_, she thinks with swooning horror. So many bodies, so many dead…but they're not dead, not quite.

In this new world, death begets life.

_They're gestating_.

#

Once again, she finds herself standing over the body of Mrs. Dunner with a scalpel poised at the edge of the sternum.

_Do you really want to see the future, Dana?_

This future is black, oily. This future has claws.

Steeling herself, she cuts through the flesh and into the bruise with one swift, steady motion. The blade slices through tissue, meeting bone and some hard thing, a force that moves and writhes even as an inky black substance flows from the wound. She cuts downward, flinching when she meets resistance, the creature beneath shifting wildly under the sharp tip.

_You'll kill it…_

_I have to see. I have to know._

_…but you've always known…_

"You've been busy, Agent Scully."

She whirls around at the man's voice. She hasn't heard the word "agent" before her surname in years, and never from the man who stands before her now.

"Excuse me?"

Director Ybarra is watching from just outside the laboratory door. Backlit against the emergency lights, he looks like a shadow, the cutout of a man. She has to squint to make out his features, and something about the way he's standing makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

"You heard me," he murmurs, stepping into the dull light. His face is deeply lined, almost grotesque, and his eyes have gone a filmy shade of black. "What are you doing?"

She swallows her guilt. "I'm checking on the autopsy results I ordered," she fibs, backing against the gurney, guarding Mrs. Dunner's bruised and violated body. Behind her, the corpse writhes at the midsection, angry at the intrusion.

"This wouldn't have anything to do with the anonymous call to the CDC placed yesterday evening, would it? How convenient, that they showed up after you came to my office on a rampage."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

The man regards her coldly. "There's only so much anonymity a small hospital can afford. In any case, it's no use. You won't stop this now."

She narrows her eyes, heart thudding dully in her chest. She suddenly wishes the scalpel were larger, more solid. The shears, heavier and just as sharp, are out of reach.

He's moving closer as his voice drops to a threatening whisper. "There is no cure, Agent Scully," he continues, eyes flashing red to black.

_My God he's not…_

"Human? No, I guess you could say I'm not," he says, finishing her thought, making her blood run cold.

"Your son. Where is he?"

Her eyes widen, mind racing, falling back on a weak bluff. "I don't have a son."

The director studies her. "You're lying. No matter, we'll find him. He's fragile now, isn't he? Yes…" the man pauses, looking almost serene, a faint smile plays across his lips. "Yes, he's weak. I can feel it. I can feel _him_."

"You…I…I don't know what you're talking about," she says, but her shaking voice betrays her.

"Oh, I think you do. He's everything, you see. Everything and nothing."

She backs away, eyes shifting, looking for an escape.

"We'll find him, Agent Scully. You're only prolonging the inevitable."

Her spine straightens, her voice rough, a whispered warning. "I haven't been an FBI agent for a long time."

The man's face drops all pretense of humanity, and for a moment she sees his true form, an empty mass just beneath the skin, his next command slippery and hollow.

"He cannot survive if the plan is to continue. You will not interfere."

She takes another step back, the gurney pressing hard into her spine. There's an emergency exit at the end of the hall outside, but he's blocking the door.

_Distract him._

He's advancing with cold, calculated movements, watching her. If she doesn't move soon she'll lose her nerve.

She reaches back, grabbing for the shears, feels the cool metal slide into her palm. She sends them flying with a desperate cry, and the razor-sharp edge whizzes by his face, missing by only an inch.

_Fuck!_

The attack slows his approach by a fraction of a second, allowing her just enough time to dodge to the side and run. His hand grazes the back of her head, knotting his fingers in her hair. There's a painful tug as each strand separates from her scalp, tears sting her eyes, but she's still moving forward.

_Out out get out he's coming_

She doesn't look back but she can feel him. He's taking his time, waiting for her to make a mistake. Her hands reach out, catching air. It's dim in this part of the basement, beyond the glow of the emergency lights. She risks a glance over her shoulder, and she can see his shadow already closing over hers, a fatal eclipse.

She ducks into an alcove, finding a shelf full of paint cans and discarded equipment. She grabs at it, using all her strength to pull it down in hopes of putting a barrier between them, giving herself precious seconds.

_What if it's bolted to the floor?_

It begins to rock, then to tip, and with one final grunt she feels gravity win over, its contents sliding and crashing to the floor before the entire structure comes down in front of Ybarra.

She runs along the perimeter, taking a right, relief bubbling up at the sight of the glowing EXIT sign. She hits the door at a full run; it rattles in its frame, but doesn't budge.

_Shit!_

Panic flutters wildly within her, her heart is a captured animal, and she is trapped.

_open, the door won't open, why won't it open get out get_

Her hands fumble uselessly, pounding against it, and she feels her resolve giving way, sliding out from beneath her like an avalanche. She can hear him coming for her, he's close now, making it harder to focus.

Then she remembers.

_The lock!_

In the old part of the hospital, they added deadbolts as a security measure to prevent entry from the outside. Her fingers slide up, up, following the line of the door, and there it is, the metal hinge in its mother clasp. She pushes at it.

_That's it, this is—_

His hands close around her throat and breath evades her. One moment she's taking air and the next, her mouth opens and closes but no sound comes out. She's lost the ability to cry for help, though she's dimly aware there's no one around to hear even if she could. Her vision fades in and out like a strobe light, until the world goes black and stays that way.

Her hand is still reaching for the deadbolt, fumbling as she gasps and chokes. His fingers are a lock around her neck, but she's fighting for consciousness when she feels the bar slide out of its clasp.

_GO_

She shoves her body backwards, hoping to throw off his balance, and it works. His grip loosens just enough for her to lunge forward into the door with an exhausted grunt, and it gives way against their combined weight. They hit the ground as she takes her first breath.

The air is cold, slicing at her raw, aching throat. Her ribs are screaming, but it's so, so good to breathe. Adrenaline gives her strength, and she turns, fingers reaching out to find his face, scratching and clawing, gouging his eyes.

"Ahhhhhhhh!"

He screams as her fingernails dig, deeper and deeper into the sockets, burrowing into the tender flesh. His grip slackens, but his hands remain cold around her neck.

It's horrifying and satisfying, the feeling of his blood running down her hands, her arms. The meager contents of her stomach rocket upward, stinging the back of her tongue with bile. She stays with her hands in a death grip around the man's skull, thrashing back and forth with strangled cries.

She doesn't release him until he's convulsing in pain, and Scully scrambles to her feet, breathing hard, reorienting herself.

She's at the back of the hospital; the parking lot with her car is on the other side of the building. She reaches into her pocket, but comes away empty handed.

_Oh no no no, they're not here_

Her car keys are still in her office. The director is groaning, still clutching at his face, but soon he'll heal.

And then he'll come for her.

_I won't be so lucky again…_

She bolts, pounding along the wet grass at the side of the building.

_Run don't look back just run RUN_

She rounds the corner, flying toward the office. The doors swing open, inviting her in, but the halls are dark. The emergency lights in this building are dead, shoddy maintenance on a shoestring budget, and she curses the hospital's tight pockets.

She stops short, lungs burning with each laden breath. Her neck aches from where his fingers were coiled only minutes before. Her fingers graze the swollen hollow of her throat, and she feels herself swoon with fear, the sweat on her back like a fine sheen of ice.

_Move it, Doc. He'll get to Isaac. You need to get the hell out of here now._

She finds her strength, sliding along the wall to her right until she finds the door. She's been through this building hundreds of times, but tonight the stairwell is pitch black and deep. One small step forward might send her tumbling down the rabbit hole.

A rasping sound at her shoulder startles her and she wheels around, trembling, before realizing it's just the echo of her own breath.

_Calm down. Get the keys. Get out._

Her imagination toys with her cruelly as she stumbles up the stairs. Instinct tells her to run, but she can't see more than a foot in front of her face. Every step echoes in the tiny space and she fears he'll hear her gasping and coughing, the metallic clunk of her footsteps on the treads.

A soft whimper escapes her as she reaches the second floor landing, but there's no time for relief. She stops, listening, ears straining against the night for any sign of him, but there's only the haunting creak of the building around her.

Her office is a welcome sanctuary; the familiar warmth of the knob turns smoothly in her hand. The keys will be in her jacket pocket, and if she remembers—

Oh fuck!

She trips on something on the floor, probably her briefcase, and her chin slams into the desk. Pinpoints of light flare at the back of her lids and pain washes over her, wave after wave, until she's forced to sit with her back against the desk and close her eyes.

_You're wasting time, he's coming for you._

And he is, she can feel it. The hair on the back of her neck prickles against her collar, and she reaches out weakly, grasping for the jacket on the back of her chair, feeling the comforting weight of the car keys in the pocket.

Yes!

Closing her fingers around the keys, she struggles to her feet on protesting legs. She heads for the stairwell at the opposite end of the hall, hoping to put more distance between herself and the main entrance. This stairwell is also dark, but her eyes have had time to adjust, and she makes her way swiftly down, down, and out the back exit.

_Almost there, Dana, keep going._

Something flickers in her peripheral vision.

_Oh God it's him_

He's standing at the side of the building, waiting. A half-turn and he'll see her, the sound of the door closing behind her will alert him. She fights the instinct to retreat, to duck back into the building and hide.

_Go! Now!_

She dodges to the left and around the corner, just in time to hear the door groan shut on its hydraulic hinge. It's the faintest of clicks, but she immediately feels his eyes on her, raking down her back. She'll have to double back to get to her car and now it's a footrace for her life. Her lungs scream and her legs ache, but she can't stop. He's faster, stronger, he'll close the distance in seconds.

She can see the parking lot up ahead as she crosses the mall, can see the tail end of her Prius shining under the lights. Her muscles protest as she increases speed, remembering a time when such a run might not have winded her this much; a time before her ribs were scarred, a time when she'd trained for situations like this every other day at a cushy government gym. Hell, she hadn't needed to train; running these races—for her life, for Mulder's—had been part of the job.

Tears prick at the corners of her eyes, they burn as her breath rushes in, out, in, out. She's almost to her car, and she fumbles the key fob in her hand, searching for the unlock button, mashing the keys until the headlights flash. The car alarm sounds as she hits the side, yanking on the door handle, then she's in, with a second to spare.

He hits the car at a run, and the force of the impact sends the Prius shuddering sideways on its tires. The driver's side door caves to his weight, and she screams as the window cracks, threatening to buckle. She manages to get the key in the ignition and the car roars to life, just as he rears back to finish off the window.

_No!_

Her foot hits the accelerator and she slams into reverse, tearing out of the parking spot. The attack lands a sizable dent above her left front tire. There's the thud of rubber against metal as she draws the car back, back, back, and he turns on her, meeting her gaze. She hesitates for a split second before shifting into drive and pressing the accelerator to the floor.

_Can't kill it, but I can make it want to die._

She gasps when the car makes contact, when his body slides under her tires without so much as a sigh. She can hear the meaty crack of his bones under the wheel. She stifles a cry, stopping only when she's yards away and the monster-thing's crumpled form lays lifeless in her rearview.

She turns, pulse thrumming at her battered throat, watching the body through the rear window for any sign of movement. She's frozen with her foot on the pedal, prepared to render his inhuman form a bloody pulp beneath her wheels.

_Don't just sit there, Dana, MOVE_

She's barely conscious as she navigates out of the parking lot, the tires leaving streaks of black on the pavement behind her. Suddenly she can think of nothing but putting as much distance between herself and Our Lady of Sorrows as possible.

When she finally pulls over, she's on the highway, miles from the hospital and well past her intended exit. Her forehead meets the smooth plastic coating of the steering wheel, allowing herself ten breaths, in and out. Ten breaths to still the shaking of her bloodstained hands, to calm the rushing of her heart.

One, two.

_Get to Isaac._

Three, four, five.

_They're going to hatch. Fuck, they're going to _hatch_._

Six, seven, eight nine ten.

She grips the wheel, grateful for its solid form as she navigates barren streets. She's traveled them so many times, but tonight they are too quiet to be familiar.

_They won't stop until he's dead…until we're all dead._


	18. Chapter 18

MARCH 31, 2015

7:45 P.M.

Mulder's truck doesn't do well under the best of circumstances, and now, at a time when he needs it most, it's giving him grief. It's been hitching and groaning for the last hour, and finally the pickup coasts to a stop on a back road just outside of Prospect.

When the dash light comes on, he knows he's pushed the truck past its feeble limits. He turns it off, letting the engine cool before turning the key in the ignition, nothing but an empty _click-click-click_ to show for his efforts.

"Damnit!"

His fist hits the steering wheel with a dull thud, bruising the side of his hand in a rush of delicate pain. He relishes it, lets every nerve vibrate with it, a chance to feel something other than the desperation that followed him from the hospital.

But it's temporary, the pain, and when he comes back to himself he realizes he's stranded in the middle of nowhere with a truck that won't start and a couple hundred miles to go. He can't help but take the machine's failure as a personal affront.

_Yeah, well…fuck you, too._

_#_

He'd bought it from a neighbor, though they use the term loosely. The man's property abuts Scully's, but they've only talked once; when Mulder showed up on his doorstep, asking about the Ford at the end of the drive.

It was during one of the bad times, shortly after they'd settled at the farmhouse, when Scully started her residency at the hospital. Mulder was dead weight, unable to work, unable to do much of anything besides wait for Scully to come home. He spent a lot of time wandering back roads, walking and brooding, and on one of these walks he happened upon the truck with the _For Sale_ sign propped in the windshield.

It had probably been red once, although in Mulder's expert estimation, it needed a new coat of paint and then some. He hadn't bothered to negotiate on price with the former owner, who was as gruff and weathered as the pickup itself. He'd even convinced the guy to tow it back to the farmhouse. The older man knew a city sucker and a good deal when he saw one.

The truck wasn't running. In fact, it needed a shit-ton of work, work Mulder didn't have one clue about, but he figured he had the time to learn.

Scully had come home to find the strange Ford in the driveway, her partner sitting in the same place she'd left him that morning, now with a dusty book in his lap, his t-shirt muddy and damp.

"Mulder?" she'd hedged, standing in the doorway and looking every bit the medical professional in her blazer and skirt. She was crisp where he was filmy; maybe they had always been this way, but it had never been more obvious until now.

"Hey, doc. How was work?" He hadn't looked up from the manual, the 1987 edition of _Motor's Auto Repair_.

"It was fine…Mulder? What's with the truck?"

"Hmm? Oh! Yeah, I bought a truck today."

"You bought a…truck."

She'd blinked, looking over her shoulder to stare at the vaguely vehicular heap of rust that had invaded their front yard. One look at her face told him she thought he'd finally gone over the deep end, and maybe he had.

"Mulder…does it work?"

He'd frowned, flipping back and forth between pages and squinting, then tilting the book from side to side, trying to make sense of the fingerprint-smudged line drawing of this strange beast's mechanical heart. "Define 'work.' I'm going to fix it."

He'd never been inclined. Brought up on the Vineyard amongst government officials and ivy-league graduates did that to a person. In his world, cars worked by magic and voodoo trickery. When they didn't work, you paid someone until they did.

But the endless stretches of empty time made him restless, anxious, paranoid—and for a man who had good reason to be paranoid, he couldn't afford to lose what little grip on sanity he had left. It was time one forcibly retired Fox Mulder found something useful to do.

He'd fixed up the truck, little by little, agonizing over his tattered copy of _Motor's_ as though he were back in college cramming for a test. Scully would come home at midnight to find him under the flood lights, elbows-deep in the engine block, wrenching away on one piece or another. Over dinner, he'd yammer on about carburetors and fuel pumps with the same level of intensity he used to reserve for UFOs and the abominable snowman.

One day, miracle of miracles, the thing started and moved, rolling forward on rubber feet. Slowly, unexpectedly, with every gasket replaced, every gauge tested, the truck came back to life.

It wasn't the prettiest thing to look at, rough around the edges, but it was functional, purposeful, not unlike Mulder himself.

#

When the engine gives a final, shuddering groan, when he needs the damn truck to go, it won't. With an angry kick of the left front tire, he leaves it by the side of the road, continuing his journey on foot.

He tucks his hands into his pockets and hunches his shoulders against the wind. It's misting, a light rain that sinks into his bones, leaving him rusty. His knee aches from the wet weather, and a long walk wasn't exactly part of the plan.

_What was the plan again, Fox? Oh, that's right. You didn't have one._

It will be dark soon. His best hope is to find an abandoned car, but he's on a less-traveled back road, lined with forest and trees, dotted with the occasional house with curtains drawn against death's impenetrable gaze.

Even when he sees a farmhouse set back from the road with candlelight burning in the windows, he doesn't stop. The dead don't scare him, but the frightened, with their jittery trigger fingers, give him good reason to move on.

The news is talking about a zombie apocalypse, bleeders everywhere, and Mulder would laugh if he weren't in such dire straights. He's had the misfortune to encounter more than one actual zombie in his career, but he's less worried about the undead as he is about the living. He hasn't seen a walking corpse yet; only soon-to-be corpses, and a lot of scared people, and that's enough to keep him moving at a steady, limping pace, alone.

_Better to stay out of sight._

He'll wait until this road crosses the main stretch. It's a five-mile trek, maybe more, and he grits his teeth against the agonizing tick of time.

He thinks of Isaac, how diminished he'd looked in that hospital bed, how his skin painted the white sheets with barely a hint of human color.

The dark voice follows him, sidles up to him, an unwelcome tenant who resists eviction.

_There was never a happily ever after for this story, Fox. You don't get to make the choices you've made and walk away from everything a free man. You have to see it through._

He'd once told Scully that the darkness finds them, but tonight, as he walks the back road with the wind in the trees and not a trace of moonlight to guide him, he decides he's not going to wait, not this time.

Tonight, he's going to find the darkness first.


	19. Chapter 19

MARCH 31, 2015

7:45 P.M.

MERCY GENERAL HOSPITAL

The Tamiflu takes the edge off the fever, but Isaac's dreams remain disconnected and erratic. There's a whispering in his head, a tongue he recognizes from those dark days in the woods, humming white noise at the back of his mind.

He dreams he's writing on himself, a story in symbols, an ancient text that fills his body with angry red slashes. His biological parents would recognize the language as Navajo, a subconscious imprint of their mixed dreams.

When he looks down he realizes he's not writing at all, but carving the words into his skin. He's bleeding out, his strength running in rivulets down his chest, his belly, leaving sticky trails of red between his thighs.

He wakes briefly, feeling sick to his stomach, but too weak to call for the nurse. Even if he could, he can't remember her name.

Now he's kissing Alice, his sweet Alice, but her flesh is melting, sticking to him like paste. She's a skeleton, bony fingers drawing lines against the curve of his jaw, pressing cold hands against the wing of his shoulder blade until he's frozen. Her face becomes her brother's, and Isaac swings his fists against the other boy's chest but it's no use, Br'er Rabbit with his paws stuck in the tar baby.

He sees the face of his mother, except it's not her—it has her shape, it whispers in her voice, but it's only a shadow wearing her skin as a disguise. This part terrifies Isaac most, because there was a time when it wasn't a dream at all.

"Mom! No!"

He twists and moans in the hospital bed, oblivious to the nurse, the cuff on his arm, the IV in the crook of his elbow.

Part of him knows that Mulder left, but now he's standing beside his bed, reaching out to him, holding Isaac's hand. The doc is there, somewhere out in the space between dreamworld and reality, and her voice rises above the chorus in his head. She's thinking about something to do with the virus that ravages his body, but he can't make sense of it in words, only pictures. He sees a glimpse of a vast underground cavern, mechanical wombs lined in dark, icy rows.

_They're coming. They're already here._

They disappear, fading into twilight, and his mind goes quiet. He's standing in a white, empty room. His aching head welcomes the abrupt silence, the echo of nothing.

Suddenly the ground shifts beneath him and he lurches forward on uncertain legs, as if on a boat in rough sea.

_Or on a ship. A great, vast ship, hurtling through the darkness…_

_"Isaac."_

His head snaps around to meet his intruder, but the voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. It has no physical presence in its true form.

_"Isaac."_

"Who's there?"

_"He can't save you, Isaac."_

The boy peers into the blinding light, but there's nothing to see. "Who are you?"

_"Save yourself, Isaac. Give yourself to us. Come home."_

His skin crawls. The voice is disguised, like a face wearing a mask that's meant to be human but falls short.

_"Come home…"_

Again, he pictures his mother in her life's last moments, reaching out to him, pulling him into empty space. Suddenly he's desperately, painfully afraid. He presses his back to the cold, white wall, gooseflesh rising on his arms.

_"Come home_," the voice whispers, this time at the nape of his neck, causing Isaac to jump forward, flinging his body in a half-circle, breathing hard.

"No! Stop! No!"

His eyes fly open but he can't see her; he can only see _them_. The shadows have been waiting, hiding behind his eyes, and tonight they've come for him. He can hear their horrible tongues in his head, the rising, cresting waves of their whispers crashing against his skull. He wails, flailing against them, trying to back away.

_No! No no…_

_#_

"Isaac! Hey, kiddo, wake up!"

He's thrashing in the bed, the IV line has almost come out, and Eileen has her hands full trying to calm him.

"Isaac!"

She's hovering over him, holding his shoulders, but she can't get through. His breath is thready, panicked, eyes wide and dilated. His lips are blue-white at the edges.

_He'll have to fight for breath soon enough_, she thinks, trying and failing to get a mask over his face. His hand falls against her shoulder, eyes rolling in his head, and a hum of energy at his palm sends her rocking backward. Stunned, she grasps at her shoulder.

_What the…?_

His body arches off the bed with a strangled cry, the strange shock temporarily forgotten as she tries once again to soothe his feverish flailing.

"C'mon…wake up!"

She heads for the nurse's station, hoping to find something she can inject into his IV, wishing there were another doctor here to make the call; at the very least, another nurse to help restrain him.

_Something mild, Eileen…don't want to depress his lung function any more than it already is…_

Isaac wails again, like a lost spirit haunting the children's ward.

_Night terrors,_ she thinks, remembering her own son, still at home, still in his bed…she pictures his face, one pink cheek pressed against the pillowcase, hair tousled with sleep, jaw slack. She followed the sounds of his terrified shrieks down the hall night after night for weeks. As many times as it happened, the sound of his screaming never failed to make her skin prickle.

Her hand shakes, fumbling the medicine, nearly stabbing herself with the uncapped needle.

_He'd gone to bed earlier than his usual 7:30 bedtime, complaining of a sore throat…_

A crash brings the memory to a halt, startling her from the precipice of the thing she isn't supposed to think about. The syringe drops to the floor, skittering under a cabinet, forgotten.

"Shit," she mutters, turning to find the boy on his feet, crying. Somehow he's knocked over the IV. It trails limp and useless from the pole, and now he's ripping at the tape in his arm.

She runs back to the desk, grabbing for a clean syringe. Isaac is screaming again, his rough voice echoing eerily in the hall, "No! Don't let them! I don't want to come home!"

Eileen, barely able to restrain him enough to steady the needle, pins him against the bed and drives the point into his upper thigh, depressing the plunger.

It takes several minutes of thrashing beneath her trembling arms for his screams to become whispered protests and hiccups. His breathing slows as she eases him back against the pillows.

_Jesus. Another episode like that and he'll kill himself before the infection does._

Her hands are shaking too hard to attempt the IV, and the smell of her own fear is cloying.

There's a spray of blood on the floor, a few drops from where the line was ripped out. She finds a paper towel, wipes at the mess until the blood smears across the floor in a gruesome rainbow of red and pink. The sight of it makes her stomach turn, and she has a vision of black-red droplets on a tattered white blanket.

_Oh, oh no…_

She blinks back tears and turns her mind to cleaning. There's an antibacterial wash in the closet, and she sets to work on the floor, scrubbing the tile under and around the bed on hands and knees until there's no trace of blood. It shines unnaturally under the emergency lights, the rest of the floor dull in comparison.

So she continues washing as if in a trance, forward and back, forward and back, rocking with it until there's nothing but the rhythm of the movements, the feeling of sweat stinging along her brow.

"There," she says finally, groaning as she unlocks her body from the unnatural crouch. She surveys the room, hands on her hips, speaking to no one in particular. Her knees are raw, aching bone, but the pain is worth the peace. Cleaning keeps the other monsters at bay.

_For now._

She turns to Isaac, adjusting his blanket, prepping his IV while her subconscious churns. She's seen her fair share of patients in distress, but tonight she recognizes for the first time just how alone she is in this place. She should leave, go home to be with her son, but…

_But I can't_, she thinks simply, not allowing herself to drift further into those recesses, for they are a dark and winding road.

_He needs me here._

Her shoulder aches, and she rubs at it absently, wincing as her hand grazes the tender skin of her upper arm. She pulls up her sleeve to find a patch of crimson above the apex, just shy of blistering, in the shape of a handprint.

_Burned._ _The kid burned me…_

She'd been too preoccupied to think about it at the time, but now she examines her own body with growing worry, her flesh crawling with the heat of a small fire where he'd touched her.


	20. Chapter 20

MARCH 31, 2015

11:27 P.M.

MERCY GENERAL HOSPITAL

She's parked at the unfamiliar hospital, but Scully can't remember how she got here, doesn't know how long she's been sitting in her car, staring into the dark.

_…shock, you're in shock…_

She'd felt numb after the escape, but now her jaw aches from where she hit it on the desk, echoing each painful throb at her temples. A glance in the rearview mirror reveals her chin has split open on one side. There's blood drying on her neck, and a bruise forming on her chin to match the bruises around her throat, from where his fingers held her. When she swallows, it feels like a stone is embedded in her larynx.

_I could pass for one of the infected. _The thought almost makes her laugh, but when she opens her mouth, it comes out sounding like a sob.

Mercy General appears deserted. There's no sign of life from within, no lights save for the emergency backups. She exits her car on weak, stumbling legs to check the doors, finding them locked. Looking down, she realizes her cellphone is still clutched in the vise grip of her hand.

_Mulder. I called him…I was waiting…_

She leans her burning head against the cool glass, an unrecognizable battered woman staring back at her. Her reflection is inside; she needs to get inside.

_Pull it together, Dana. You need to find Isaac._

The wind creates a hollow moan through the emergency alcove. In the unnatural stillness, it's easy to believe the world has passed into a deep, endless sleep, leaving her the only survivor.

_…gone they're all gone it's just you and the little gray men…_

Her fists smack against the glass with hollow, ineffective thuds, and now she's yelling, screaming at the top of her lungs, but barely a whisper escapes her broken throat. It's unintelligible nonsense amongst wracking sobs, the shock washing away to reveal a tender core of pain and sorrow.

_He's dead. They're all dead. We're all dead._

Her answer appears as a watery face in the glass, like a spirit caught between worlds, and Scully reels back with a strangled cry. But it's only a nurse, staring at her with wide, intense eyes, and before she can plead her case, the door slides open with a whisper.

"Get in. Now."

Scully gapes, mouth hung open, wonders if she's hallucinating the figure before her.

"Now!" the woman snaps, "I don't want anyone coming in on your heels."

She swallows, but none of what the woman says makes sense. She manages to choke out, "My son, my son is—"

"He's here. He's safe."

"How do you—"

"Follow me."

The woman locks the door behind them, casting uneasy glances at the night, before leading them down the hall and into a stairwell. Scully follows, walking as though in a dream. "Who are you? Where are you taking me?"

"You want to see your son, right? Come with me."

The woman is fierce, impatient, dark hair lose and curling at the nape of her neck. Scully watches her back as she moves on quick, light feet through the hospital's winding corridors, entering a stairwell in what must be the central building. Much larger than Our Lady of Sorrows, Mercy General is a public, non-secular facility, with the funding to show for it.

"I thought you were one of the bleeders at first. With that," the nurse gestures to the bruising on Scully's neck as they climb. Four flights. Five. "You should let me have a look at it."

Scully flinches, the gash on her chin throbs under the other woman's scrutiny. "I'm a doctor, it's fine. Right now I need to see my son."

The nurse eyes her approvingly. "He didn't tell me that."

"He?"

"Your husband."

Scully frowns. "He's not my husband, he's my—"

The nurse arches an eyebrow, cutting her off. "Whatever, it doesn't matter."

"Wait, just…just wait a minute. How did you know me? How did you know to let me in?" They've stopped outside the door, floor number six.

A sadness passes across the woman's face, so fleeting she might have imagined it. "He looks like you. He has your eyes."

Scully swallows the lump in her throat, but the ache around her neck, the sharp pain in her jaw reminds her of Ybarra. "I…I need to see him. He…we may be in danger."

"He's this way, but…"

The woman's hesitation makes Scully's pulse cold. "But what?"

"He lost consciousness about an hour ago," she says.

Her heart sinks like an anchor's weight in her chest. "Is he—"

"He's weak, but stable. Your…whatever he is. Mr. Mulder. He gave me his cellphone, but I haven't been able to reach him. I think the towers are out."

Scully bites back her fear._ He didn't answer…_

A heavy pause. "I just thought you should know about your son's condition, before you see him. So you're prepared."

Scully nods, urging the woman on. "I need to see him now. Please."

The door opens, revealing what looks like a children's ward, primary colors with cartoons dancing across the walls. At one time they might have been a welcome distraction, but tonight they're garish, leering, almost sinister. Her footsteps echo in the open space.

_Like a tomb._

The room is dark, Isaac is small and frail beneath the blue hospital blanket. Scully's hand automatically moves to his throat, finding his pulse, slow but strong.

_Oh, Isaac. William._

"You said you're a doctor?"

Scully swallows, her voice rough, her eyes don't leave the boy's pale face. "Yes."

"He's lucky to have you, then."

She shakes her head, squeezing her eyes shut as her fingers clamp around the boy's hand. "How is this lucky?"

The woman shrugs. "He's still alive."

Scully snorts, tracing the lines of the boy's palm with one finger. There's a moment of cutting irony when she realizes this is the most she's touched him since he came back.

_He wouldn't let me get this close…_

The other woman's voice softens. "He can probably hear you, if you want to talk."

Scully knows this from her training, but she can't think of what she might say that isn't trite.

_I love you. I'm sorry. I wish things were different._

"It would probably help him, you know," the nurse continues. Her face is drawn, as though she's somewhere far away, thinking of something else.

Scully swallows hard. "Look, I appreciate what you've done for him, but…"

"You said we're in danger."

She nods. "There's a…a man. A very dangerous, very powerful man. He'll come for us. For Isaac."

"Why?"

"I can't tell you."

"So many secrets…" The nurse takes a deep breath, lets it out in a tired rush. "And I suppose a few locked doors won't stop him."

Scully nods again, thinking of her car, the outline of a human hand permanently hollowed in the metal door.

Eileen is thinking, too. "We can barricade ourselves in one of the central rooms. Hide, until your…"

"Partner," Scully offers.

"…until your partner gets back."

Scully looks at the other woman carefully, considering her. She's rough at the edges, but her mind is quick.

_Stronger than she looks._

Eileen tips her head forward as if in answer to some unasked question, then turns to leave.

"Where are you going?"

The nurse doesn't look back. "We're going to need supplies."

Scully watches her retreat, then turns back to Isaac. Intuition draws her to the spot at his midriff, above his navel. She places her hand on the blanket, feeling the gentle rise and fall of his breath beneath her fingertips, so painfully slow.

Scully closes her eyes, bracing herself, then pulls back the blanket and unties his gown.

_Bruised. Just like the others._

She snaps the gown back, re-tucking the blanket around his slight form, trying to exhale around the rush of her broken mother's heart.

_Oh, Isaac._

She reaches for her cell, dialing his number with unsteady fingers, but a recorded Mulder tells her to leave it at the beep.

_Damnit._

"Mulder, it's me. I don't know where you are, but you need to come back, and hurry…the body, I did the autopsy, and…," she pauses for a shaky breath, biting her lip, "Mulder, I found something."


	21. Chapter 21

APRIL 1, 2015

2:30 A.M.

He's been walking for hours when he finds the abandoned car, keys still in the ignition. Mulder glances over his shoulder, but the only sign of another's presence is a smear of dark blood on the wheel. He wipes it off with a napkin from the glove compartment.

_Don't think about it._

The engine turns over, roaring to life with unexpected ferocity. It needs gas, but he's close enough to a main road, there will be a station soon.

_Hopefully the pumps are still working._

They are. He fills up at a weathered mom-and-pop joint that probably hasn't seen half a dozen customers since the virus hit, and likely not many more before then. He tries the door, intending to leave some cash on the counter, but it's locked up tight.

_Nobody home._

He drives on, fighting sleep, cruising past dark houses and streetlights, the car's lonely beams his only illumination. The night is an endless tunnel of shimmering white lines, trees like sharp teeth in his peripheral vision, and he wishes he'd thought to grab something with caffeine.

_Isaac's face, sunken eyes in white paper skin, blood running from his mouth, the oil spreading in every direction on a background of fire…_

The car jerks hard to the left as Mulder overcorrects, coming out of the dream with a gasp.

_Wake up!_

He slows the car until he's gathered his bearings, rolls down the window to let the cool night air whip around his face.

The radio is a hopeful distraction, but most of the stations have gone to static. When he finally finds a working broadcast, there's some old man railing about fire and brimstone in between coughing spasms.

_"But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed."_

Mulder's chest constricts. He turns the knob so hard, it snaps off and falls to the floor, rolling under the passenger's seat.

_A-fucking-men._

He makes it to the highway by what should be the morning rush hour, but he can count the number of passing cars on one hand. More prominent are the cars that don't move at all, those abandoned on the side of the road, or occasionally parked in the middle, like a video on pause. He tries not to think about who—or what—those stagnant vessels might contain.

_…heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved…_

As the rural landscape gives way to suburban sprawl, he expects to find blockades, signs of military enforcement, but there's nothing more than the low moan of air through the car vents, the hum of the tires, and the fast-approaching skyline.

_By the time they realized it was happening, it was too late._

But it's more than that, he realizes. The infected crawled back to their homes to be at peace in their last moments. Like feral animals in the throes of death, they're hidden in the shadows, waiting. The bodies should be lining the streets, but there is only silence in the spaces where they lay.

_It's like someone reached out and shut off the world._

He slips through the city limits like a ghost.

#

APRIL 1, 2015

8:05 A.M.

The post office is in Scully's old neighborhood, although it's almost unrecognizable now. Minor things have changed—the supermarket where she used to buy groceries is a Target, one of the apartment buildings on her street burned down, replaced by a community garden—but what surprises him is the deep, unsettling quiet.

The few people he sees wandering the streets wear the same dazed, lost expression. The occasional car passes, but there's little traffic, more like a late Sunday night than a weekday morning. The post office itself is deserted and locked.

_Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night, but they didn't say anything about an apocalypse_.

He's approaching the entrance when something clamps onto his ankle and pulls. He lets out a wild cry, looking down to see the vague outline of a hand, riddled with black-purple veins…

_…and blood._

The man must have been sleeping on the ground, and now he's crawling out of his makeshift newspaper bed in jerky fits. The virus may be killing him, but his grip is frighteningly strong.

"You," the man croaks. Mulder can see dried blood on his teeth, his chin, his shirt. "Help…me…"

_That will happen to Isaac, too. It will happen to all of us._

"You," the man wails, stretching it out into a gurgling moan (_youuuuu_) that curdles rational thought. He's drawn by the man's eyes, his features weathered and mottled, an abstract painting come to life.

Mulder wrenches his leg from the man's clammy grasp with a muffled cry, staggering backward, nothing but unforgiving concrete to catch him. The pain radiates up his spine and he collapses onto his side, mouth moving soundlessly in surprise.

_That's gonna bruise._

Movement in his peripheral vision tells him his new friend isn't done yet. Mulder grits his teeth, struggling to his feet as the man continues his slow death crawl.

"You…help…"

"Sorry, buddy," he gasps, breathing hard as he finally regains his balance. "We're all fucked now."

He limps away as fast as his knee will allow, glancing over his shoulder twice before he's assured the man hasn't followed. The building is solid and warm against his back as he tries to catch his breath, spitting saliva laced with fear onto the damp ground.

_Spooked, Spooky?_

Sweat pools at the hollow of his shoulder blades, and he stares up into a spring sky that reminds him of Isaac's cool glass-blue eyes.

_We're all fucked now…some of us more than others._

He finds the rear entrance locked, but there's a window at ground level. It shatters after a few well-placed kicks, leaving him just enough space to squeeze inside.

_The basement…familiar territory_, he thinks, sliding down onto a long table that shakes under his weight, then to the floor of what looks like a sorting room. His back and knee protest the graceless descent, and he stumbles into a stack of bins, knocking them over.

_Way to keep it covert, G-man._

He kneels for a moment, waiting, listening to the roar of his own breath. No alarms sound, no one comes rushing around the corner to stop him. When his heart settles, he scans the room, looking for the stairs.

_Box 1673, off the lobby._

His footsteps echo in the stairwell as he makes his way up, despite his efforts to stay quiet. He doesn't want to be slowed on the off chance some overzealous postal worker decides to play hero.

_Never mind the breaking and entering with intent to commit a federal offense_, he thinks, though it occurs to him that whatever law enforcement still exists is probably beyond worrying about mail crime.

The lobby is empty, his footsteps a hesitant staccato on the shining marble floor. Skylights rain down soft light, casting a warm glow that feels out of place in the otherwise abandoned building.

The P.O. boxes are behind a locked grate, and he pulls out his pick set, grimacing as he attempts to open the enclosure. It takes longer than it should, his hands are clumsy and out of practice, but eventually the grate swings open, revealing row upon row of mailboxes. 1673 is to the left, one of the small ones, and the pen makes quick work of this lock, too.

_Someone's behind on his bills._

The box is crammed full, overflowing. Kent hasn't been here in awhile. Mulder picks up a letter at random.

_Postmarked three days ago. He can't have been gone too long or they would have held delivery…_

Suddenly there's a noise from the lobby; the creak of a door swinging open, heavy footsteps.

_Shit. Company._

He grabs a fistful of envelopes, postcards and fliers fluttering to the ground like dying moths. He tucks what he can into the inner pocket of his jacket, but doesn't have time to get it all.

There's a door to the service area on his left, unlocked, and he ducks inside, situating himself underneath the counter as quietly as he can.

Whoever it is is also doing their best to stay quiet; they haven't announced themselves, but their slow, deliberate footsteps echo, stopping just feet from where Mulder is crouched on the other side of the counter.

_They'll see the open grate._

Instinct tells him he doesn't want to meet his mystery visitor. His eyes dart from one corner to the other, squinting into the darkness beyond the counter, searching for an exit.

He shuffles as quietly as he can to the center of the sorting area, finding cover behind a large cart, stacked high with parcels that will never make it to their owners. He can make out the outlines of two doors at the back of the room, neither marked with an Exit sign.

_Eenie menie miney mo…_

Suddenly his phone rings inside his pocket, a piercing wail that stills his heart and makes his efforts to hide for naught.

_Shit!_

He fumbles the infernal device and jams his finger against the mute button without looking at the screen, but it's too late. There's breathing at the entrance to the service area, confident footsteps over the threshold.

_I'll take door number 2, Monty._

The door on the right hangs open, revealing another office with a desk, a filing cabinet, but no exit, save for a window.

He rushes over and tries to pry up the old wood frame. He can hear the man approaching the office with the same slow, steady plod, and Mulder grits his teeth, lips pulled back in a snarl as he works against the stubborn frame.

_C'mon, c'mon…_

His muscles strain and the window begins to slide up with a tired groan. For a moment there's hope, but it jams again after squeaking open a few inches. Not nearly enough clearance to slip through.

_…no time no time hide…_

He risks a glance over his shoulder to see a long shadow sliding toward the doorway. He ducks along the wall, slinking behind the desk in the corner just as the shadow crosses the threshold.

Mulder holds his breath, waiting.

_Trapped._

There's a pause, the sound of the other man's even breathing.

"You can't hide."

The voice is self-assured, and with good reason.

_He's right. You're out of ideas._

Mulder slides out from behind the desk, bringing his hands up in surrender, the trace of a nervous smirk on his lips. "Just here to pick up my mail."

The man's face is hard, chiseled from stone, molded by metal. The heavy boots suggest military, but there are no other indicators on his uniform—no badges, not even a name tag. In fact, his most noticeable feature is his lack of definition. He could be anyone.

_His eyes match_, Mulder thinks wildly, _the same dull shade of nothing._

The man is on him in seconds, yanking Mulder to his feet with superhuman strength. "You're lying."

Mulder swallows, struggling. "You…got me. I'm out of…Forever Stamps."

He's launched backward with a sharp shove, colliding with the desk. The impact leaves Mulder dizzy, but he struggles to his feet. "You—"

"Where is she?"

_She? Scully?_

"I don't…know," he mutters, and the man swipes his bad leg, bringing him down in a single fluid motion before Mulder can react. The knee buckles with a deceptively soft sound, like the crack of an egg's shell.

_Almost like the fucker knew it_, he thinks with a grimace, stars swimming behind his eyes.

"Tell me where she is."

"I don't…know…what you…want," Mulder groans, until a well-placed kick to his ribs renders him unable to speak. He's dimly aware of his body being lifted as though it were made of paper, the back of his head connecting with the wall as he slips into the black.

#

He dreams a memory, fixed in a state of half-consciousness in another time.

The world is a sea of unfamiliar cars and trucks. He's running through the fray, dodging bumpers, squinting against the glaring lights while a deep, aching fear crawls in his gut.

_No one was supposed to be here, no one was supposed to know…_

"Mulder!" a familiar voice rings out over the receding roar of the cars, and he sees Agent Reyes, silhouetted against the glow of light pooling outside the run-down cabin. "Over here!"

_Scully…_

He runs, nearly knocking over the junior agent, but she blocks his way. "She needs a hospital."

"Where is she? Who are these people?" He's yelling over the whir of the helicopter, the distant engines of strangers. At first he thinks Reyes hasn't understood, so he repeats himself, but she just stares at him and shakes her head.

_I don't know._

His heart fears the worst as she moves aside, allowing him access to the warm orange light of the cabin.

_Scully._

She's sitting in a makeshift bed, clutching a white-sheeted bundle in her arms, looking at the door with muted terror in her eyes. The room smells of blood and dust, new life mixed with old.

At first she doesn't see her partner standing dumbly in the middle of the room. He's just another shape, the vague shadow of a human form, a potential threat.

"No…don't…" but the words are barely a whisper. She curls her body instinctively around the baby, as if waiting for him to deliver the final blow.

No one is safe, not even him.

"Scully…Scully, it's me." He approaches tentatively, slowly, until he sees recognition light her eyes.

"Mulder?"

"It's me," he repeats himself, feeling stupid and useless. She's staring at him with an almost feral intensity, a mother bear protecting her cub. "Are you…is everything…"

"We're OK," she whispers, but he can see her shoulders trembling.

_She's in shock._

"Good, that's good. Let's get you to a hospital," he soothes, reaching out, but she flinches away from his touch. He swallows hard, feeling the acute sting of rejection, hiding it with a glance over his shoulder to Reyes. He jerks his head back, indicating for her to step outside, where the medivac unit is waiting.

"They can't take him," Scully says. "He's…he's OK. He's normal. He's here, they can't take him."

Mulder manages a small smile, forced, trying to put her at ease while his mind races. Normal. Normal is good.

Then, _He. She said "he". It's a boy._

A boy.

Things go from surreal to too real in an instant.

"Can you walk?"

She nods, wincing as she shifts on the bed, closing her eyes with the effort. He tries to ignore the blood on the sheet, catches a glimpse of red streaked down one cream-colored thigh, reminding himself it's a normal part of the birth, that it doesn't mean she's hurt…but there's so much.

_She's pale_, he thinks, and when her head tips to the side, she looks as though she might tip over. He kneels, reaching out again, this time to steady her.

"Dizzy," she murmurs, leaning into him. "I…I think…I may be anemic."

He looks up to find Reyes standing at the end of the bed, eyes wide and dark with worry. "They're ready."

"We need a stretcher, she's too weak," he feels himself say with an authority he doesn't feel. Reyes nods and heads outside, he can hear her shouting to the EMTs over the din.

"Mulder…can you…can you take him," Scully whispers, her breath falling against his neck like a prayer.

At first he doesn't know what she means._ Take who?_ he thinks, before he realizes she means the baby.

_The baby._ He hasn't even looked at him, not closely, this other person to worry about. His world has grown by a third, but all he can think of is his partner, and how he couldn't keep her safe.

"Take him, please," she whispers again, more urgent this time. "I'm shaking too much, I'm afraid I'll drop him—"

"Got it, I've got it," Mulder says, lifting the bundle from her arms, trying to remember what they'd said in the Lamaze class. Cradle the head, watch the soft spot, support the neck… it was easy when they were handling dolls, but this is different. They were shown videos of happy couples in sterile hospitals with clean blankets, kindly doctors and nurses, the father looking on with excitement and awe.

There is no sterile hospital, no smiling doctor, and this couple is terrified of something neither can put into words.

The baby flails in his arms, the makeshift blanket comes undone, and Mulder tries to tuck it back in. His hands feel too big, clumsy, like they'll break the tiny bones that rest in the crook of his arm, and with every failed attempt he seems to make it worse. The baby's cry is becoming frantic, separated from his mother, from the warmth of her skin.

_Sorry, kid. You're stuck with me for now._

He avoids looking at the boy's face. He doesn't trust his memory to leave the image alone once it grabs hold, isn't ready for this new life to become a permanent fixture.

Scully watches through heavy lids, finally reaching up to help him with the blanket, and their fingers touch. They're icy, despite the warmth in the room, and he worries again about the blood pooling around her thighs.

"It'll be OK," he whispers into her hair, averting his eyes, not knowing if he's saying it more for her benefit or his. She grasps his hand, giving a weak squeeze in response. They sit like this, Scully tucked against his shoulder, hanging onto consciousness by a thin thread, and Mulder holding the child, looking away from them both.

"Stretcher's here," Reyes interrupts.

Two paramedics shuffle in behind her, maneuvering the bed through the narrow doorway. The three of them help Scully onto the gurney, tucking blankets and straps around her diminished figure.

Mulder is so intent on watching her, he doesn't notice when one of the paramedics reaches for the child in his arms, until his partner's voice cuts through the room, sharp as a knife.

"No! He stays with me."

Her eyes are wildfire, and Mulder blinks in the face of their heat. She gestures for him to place the newborn on her chest, and he does. There's a brief moment of lightening as he relinquishes the baby, followed by a pang of guilt that what he feels is relief, not love.

He sits in the ambulance with her, crammed next to one of the paramedics, who tries and fails to make small talk.

"You the father? Congratulations."

Mulder doesn't answer, tunes the man out as he chats idly about the weather and his grandchildren, as if any of it matters. Scully appears to be sleeping, but her knuckles are white and stiff over the baby's back. Mulder imagines that, when they remove the blanket, they'll find her fingerprints permanently etched into the boy's tender skin.

Somehow they make it to the hospital. They're waiting in the bay of the receiving area when she finds Mulder's hand again. This time she's in control, no trembling.

"Don't let them separate us," she whispers, fierce, and again, it takes him a moment to realize she means the baby, not him.

He nods. This is something he can do, something he's good at. He almost hopes some jackass doctor will challenge him, give him an excuse to unleash the anger coiled at the back of his throat.

But for once, no one does. They're admitted and brought to a room, Mulder trailing behind the gurney like a stray dog. When a nurse asks if he's family, he doesn't know what to say.

"He stays," Scully murmurs, but she's looking at the baby.

Mulder stands awkwardly inside door, observing the on-call team as they ask question and perform their examinations, turning away when the OB sits at the end of the table and asks Scully to slide down. The privacy curtain squeals on its runners.

He mutters something about going to get coffee, but Scully doesn't notice; she's still clutching the baby to her chest, staring at the ceiling, waiting for this uncomfortable invasion of her modesty to be over.

The nurses are already cooing over the child, and as he turns to leave, Mulder wonders how such a little being could have taken up so much space in his partner's slender figure, let alone her heart.

He tells himself he'll grab a drink then come right back, wondering if fifteen minutes is enough time to figure out how he feels.

_Probably not._

The cafeteria is too bright, too loud. He stands at the coffee machine for several minutes, cup in hand, perplexed at the array of choices—light, medium, dark, gourmet blend, cappuccino, French vanilla, mocha swirl.

_Christ, even coffee is complicated._

He's still looking dumbly at the machine when a nurse comes up behind him. "You should try the cappuccino, I practically live on the stuff."

She smiles, a warm, inviting look that Mulder might interpret as flirting under different circumstances, but he's preoccupied, thinking about his partner and her new plus-one.

He returns the nurse's smile in a silent thank-you, but it comes out more like a wince. Frothy liquid fills his cup, and he sits at the quietest table he can find, at the far corner of the cafeteria. One sip tells him he's made a mistake; the cappuccino is saccharine, too sweet, but he drinks it anyway, a mediocre punishment.

_It wasn't supposed to happen like this. I should have stayed dead._

An hour passes before Reyes finds him. She's bright eyed, a blue teddy bear from the hospital gift shop clutched under one arm, as if she hadn't helped deliver a baby before an audience of strangers not four hours ago.

_And what did they want with him?_

"Mulder! Where is she?"

"Room 438," he intones. His coffee cup is a mess of waxy shredded paper. He's shuffling and sorting the pieces into piles as she approaches.

"Are they OK?" Reyes slips into the seat across from him, but he doesn't look up from his handiwork.

"They're alright," he mutters. "They're counting fingers and toes…making sure the kid doesn't beam up to the mothership." A humorless smile pulls at the corners of his mouth.

There's a knowing pause as Reyes considers him. "I take it things aren't what you expected?"

"I don't know what I expected," he admits. "But it looks like someone was two steps ahead of us."

She blinks. "You think they're in danger?"

The bitter flavor of his words drowns out the too-sweet aftertaste of the coffee. "You tell me. I wasn't there."

"You were, though. You got there just in time."

He sits back, eyeing her. Any other agent might be uncomfortable under his scrutiny, but Reyes, for all her quirkiness, is stronger than she seems. She doesn't flinch, doesn't look away.

"I'm not so sure," he says, swiping the dismantled paper cup into the palm of his hand before tossing it under the table, "seeing as I missed the rest of the welcoming committee."

She nods, unmoved by his sarcasm. "Right now, I don't think that matters. He's here, and they're safe. The rest is," she sighs, leaning forward, "the rest is an X-file for another day."

"My whole fucking life is an X-file," Mulder snaps, wincing at the way he sounds, a grown man with a sulk. "So is Scully's, no thanks to me."

Reyes narrows her eyes. "You still _have_ your life. You have Scully, and this baby. Most people would count themselves lucky."

"If you knew me, you'd know that I'm not most people, Agent Reyes."

"Maybe not...but what I do know is that it's not about you now," she says, arching a knowing eyebrow, tilting her head up.

_Four floors up, to be exact._

To this, he doesn't have a response, and she sits back, smug and triumphant. "Here…take this," she says, handing over the stuffed bear, his consolation prize. "Tell her I said 'Congratulations.'"

He bites his lip, scowling, but accepts the bear.

Scully's room is dark, and he almost loses his nerve at the door. She's resting, the baby is sleeping—he can see the outline of the bassinet next to her bed.

_What are you doing to do, Fox? Hang out in the cafeteria until it's time to bring them home?_

For once, his father's voice is useful in its belligerence.

He approaches the crib as he might a ticking bomb, and for all intents and purposes, that's what this tiny creature is. Every constant in his life has been blown to bits.

The first thing he sees is the outline of her delicate fingers, her hand draped over the side of the enclosure, resting on the baby's stomach, preserving the connection between mother and son even as they sleep. He smiles a little despite himself.

_She's not going to let him out of her sight until he's thirty._

_Thirty._

His throat constricts, remembering the cars gathered around the cabin like worshippers, their headlights brilliant and terrible as the blinding white light from the craft that dropped his dead body in a ditch only months before.

_…thirty…if he lives that long. Shit._

He's about to drop the stuffed animal and head back to tell Reyes how she's wrong, how Scully and their son will be better off without him. He'll leave the hospital and get as far away as he can. By tomorrow he could be in Canada, Mexico, hell, even Europe. A last-minute red-eye looks more appealing with every step. Maybe the past will follow him and leave them in peace.

_And what if it doesn't?_

Scully's voice brings him firmly back to the present, reminding him with one soft, sleepy sigh why he couldn't leave even if he wanted to.

"Mulder?"

"Oh…hey. I, uh…I grabbed coffee with Reyes. Didn't mean to wake you," he swallows, berating himself for the way he sounds, so formal, like he's talking to a great aunt rather than his partner.

_Best friend. Lover. Mother of your child. But who's counting?_

"How're you feeling?" he asks, skirting the crib to stand next to her bed, finding her hand, warm and strong.

"Mmm. Sore. Anemic, but I didn't need a transfusion," she says, hoarse from lack of sleep.

He nods, reaching out to tuck a lock of russet hair behind her ear. "How's the little guy?"

Her smile glows in the dim light. "Seven pounds, ten ounces, and a strong set of lungs. He doesn't like doctors…reminds me of someone I know," she says, arching one perfect eyebrow.

Mulder's smile is careful but genuine. "Smart kid. He knows there's only one doctor for him."

She chuckles, squeezing his fingers through comfortable silence. Her grip is self-assured, restored. This is the Dana Scully he knows, a distant cry from the woman he found cowering in fear in a ghost town, crimson smears on the sheets, the air crackling with an inexplicable energy…the only soundtrack the wail of an infant, helpless and small, too young to defend himself against his own future…

Her voice startles him, bringing him back from the abyss as it always does. "You can hold him, you know."

He shifts on his feet, eyeing the baby, who flexes and settles in his sleep. "I, uh, don't want to wake him up. He didn't seem to like that…"

"Mulder," she sighs, in that way that lets him know there is no arguing, not this time.

"Yeah…I, um. OK."

He handles the baby with the same level of focus he might devote to a case file, this time ensuring the blanket stays tucked. The child gives a soft squawk of protest at being disturbed, but this time he doesn't cry.

_So far, so good._

Mulder feels breath moving through the boy's fragile body like a wave. He senses Scully watching him, watching them, father and son, and he feels an odd mix of unease and pride.

"What do you know," she murmurs wryly, "I think he likes you."

The baby's lower lip sticks out in a miniature pout, lashes swept long and tender against porcelain cheeks. He stretches out one tiny hand, slender fingers balled into a fist, then brings it back and tucks it under his chin.

_Huh. Scully sleeps like that_.

It's an innocent thought, but it tugs at his already raw core. Mulder feels his throat tighten, his eyes heavy and hot.

_Damnit._

"What do you think, partner? Should we keep him?" Scully's voice is low and content, a whisper that used to be reserved for him, now divided between them.

_One more to love…one more to lose. And you always lose, Fox._

Mulder swallows the words he doesn't know how to speak, his heart betraying him at the last minute.

"Keep," he chokes out, gently swaying as the baby stirs. "He's a keeper."

#

APRIL 1, 2015

7:45 P.M.

Mulder awakens in the dark, disoriented. He'd been standing in the hospital room, but now there's the shadow of a desk in the corner, a low amber light bleeding through the doorway. No hospital, no Scully. No baby.

_William? No, it's Isaac now. Fuck, where am I?_

It comes back to him in painful, stabbing waves. The post office, the soldier, being left for dead. The sky outside is a deep orange-red, reminding him of the cabin…the smell of blood…

_You're bleeding._

He touches the back of his head where it must have hit the wall, and his fingers come away covered in reddish-brown flakes.

_It's dried. I've been out for hours._

He struggles to a sitting position, fighting the overwhelming urge to vomit. His head throbs as the desk in front of him doubles, appearing to swim on an invisible tide, before re-merging with its twin.

Only by holding onto the wall does he find his feet, his leg locked and stiff. He flexes the bad knee, feeling the taut pull of muscle and tendon creaking into alignment, and takes a few tentative limping steps, lips pulled over his teeth in a grimace.

_Could be worse. Maybe._

He eases himself against the wall, willing his eyes to focus, trying to make sense of the encounter that's left him with a concussion and a burning sensation in his bad knee. It's clear his attacker was searching for someone else. Mulder was just lucky enough to get in the way.

He checks his jacket, finding the stash of stolen mail, relieved the other man didn't think to conduct a bodily search before taking his leave.

_He obviously had other priorities._

The sun is setting as he shuffles out the front door, a blood-red stain spreading across the horizon. There's a dark scar of smoke cresting over the north end, marring an otherwise picturesque sunset, the effect more unsettling than beautiful. It occurs to him, as he pauses to watch the smoke froth and billow from the city skyline, that there will be no crews rushing to the fire.

_Everything will burn._

He swallows a newfound urgency, making his way to the car. The newspaper man from this morning is sprawled at the corner of the building, motionless, but Mulder doesn't look back.

Sitting in the borrowed car, he tears through Dr. Michael Kent's mail by the dashboard light with shaking hands. There is the standard assortment of advertisements and bills, but it's a plain white envelope that holds the key.

Kent had been careful, but his dentist wasn't so clever. An insurance claim form lists a street address in a Baltimore suburb.

"Always remember to brush and floss, kids," Mulder mutters, momentarily startled by the rough, untethered sound of his own voice.

His phone trills from within his pocket, reminding him of its unfortunate timing back at the post office. He digs it out, pulse picking up speed to match the throbbing in his head.

_6 missed calls._ _1 voicemail._

_Scully._

He dials her number at the hospital, but no one answers. Even the automated answering system has gone silent. He tries her cell phone, murmuring "C'mon, c'mon, pick up," and his half-prayer works.

"Mulder?"

"It's me."

"Oh, thank God! I've been calling…I thought you were dead," she breathes, sounding hoarse.

"Yeah," he coughs, ribs protesting the spasm of his lungs against them, head protesting the sudden movements, "Sorry, I, uh, I had a thing. Is Isaac OK?"

"He's alive, I'm here with him now, but Mulder…"

"What is it?"

"I…you were right about the body." The words tumble out in a tired rush. "I think you were right about the virus, too."

He starts the car and pulls away from the curb. "What did you find?"

"The infected…they're incubating the virus."

"What do you—"

"Gestating, Mulder. Like in Antarctica, except I think this is happening faster."

"How much faster?" he asks, easing the car onto the north-bound onramp.

"I didn't get that far," she admits. "I was interrupted before I could complete the autopsy."

"The CDC?"

"No. I was attacked."

"Attacked? Jesus, Scully—"

"The hospital director, Ybarra, he's one of them. Mulder he said…he said they're going to kill Isaac. They can hear him, like he's some kind of…some kind of homing device. Mulder, what the hell is going on here?"

Her voice is high and tight, rising and falling over him like rain. He struggles to keep the car straight, the white lines blurring, doubling, and merging in his vision. "I don't know, but I think I may have found the doctor. I have an address, a place in Baltimore, I'm on my way there now."

He hears doubt and fear in the hitch of her breath.

"Scully, I—"

"I know," she sighs, "Hurry."

A single word tells him everything. He swallows, watching the needle on the dash ease past eighty-five. "Yeah, I am. Tell Isaac to hang on."

"I will. Mulder?"

"Yeah?"

"You hang on, too."


	22. Chapter 22

MARCH 31, 2015

2:35 A.M.

She's trapped between the past and the present, her mind an untethered time traveler. Her life floats behind her eyes in a schizophrenic dance of moments, a shattered mirror with thousands of tiny shards, each one fixing itself beneath the surface of her psyche.

Here are her daughters, dark-haired and coated in vernix, their births a simultaneous crest of agony and joy. Born two years apart, but tonight they are twins, and she holds their ghosts in her arms, glowing and delicate as fresh-fallen snow. She's lived in the darkness so long, she didn't know there could be such light.

The sensation of rough cotton cloth over her eyes, smothered. Swathed in thick bandages, she peels them back from her face to reveal one swollen cheek, then another. The bridge of her nose is wrong, the chin too sharp. The scars on her skin will fade, but an open wound inside continues to seep.

She's hovering in the shadowy corner of a cell, speaking a foreign tongue with a faceless man. Her arm is wrenched back and upward, a twist so violent she blacks out. When she comes to, she's stretched thin like dough across cold metal. There is pain again, so much pain, this time with no joy to soothe it. Violated, abandoned and tossed away like a child's plaything.

She's five years old, and her father finds her in the basement, exploring in a box of discarded things. Her head rocks back on her slight shoulders when he hits her, the stars behind her eyes colliding. She tells her mother she fell down the stairs, the first lie of many. There's a hard rain at his funeral, hiding absent tears, her heart shaped from black onyx. She can smell the turned soil over the fresh grave and the earth of the basement floor as though they were one and the same.

She's flung forward once more, rebounding on the thin elastic thread of consciousness to which her thoughts are bound, tumbling downward into a luxe room with an undercurrent of decay.

"The child will be dangerous," he croaks, using her old name, her old face. A cough that has nothing to do with the virus of a later time rattles in his chest and he gasps for breath. She waits, wondering if this will be the last, but he's a stubborn old mule.

"You said you don't believe it, so why give them what they want?"

He scoffs, a burbling chuckle that turns her stomach. "Prophecies are for fools, for weak men. But it's the essence of belief that drives even the fools to do extraordinary things. If they believe," he stops, exhaling hard, inhaling with a whistling gasp, "if they believe, then they will do whatever it takes."

"There's no evidence to suggest such a child exists," she whispers carefully, her voice smooth as ice, sultry like thick velvet. "She's barren."

"Oh, one will. You see, this is a pet project of mine. Years in the making," he says, sitting back with a contented sigh, a thin, watery smile on his lips.

"You speak in parables. You play God," she says, not bothering to disguise her disgust, "but you haven't answered my question. Why go to the trouble?"

There's a sharp twinkle in his eye like a splinter of glass. "To make a man suffer in life is not hard. To make him suffer in death…that is the mark of a legacy. There's no better way to show the man the sum of his life than to see his failures reflected in his child's eyes."

She bites her tongue and tastes salt and copper._ You sick fuck._

He levels his gaze at her as if he's read her thoughts, his eyes dull and low in his gray, shrunken face. "I do what I have to do. As do you."

She takes in this silent acknowledgment of her place as the world fades to black, the elastic snapping back through time to deposit her, aching and cold, on the floor of the study.

#

APRIL 1, 2015

6:42 P.M.

She waits in the corner, watching his lifeless body as though it might rise up of its own volition. At one point she thinks he does. The infection is burning through her bloodstream at this point, her mind loose and fluid, soon to be relieved of its earthly restraints.

In a dark fantasy, he kisses her, nipping at her swollen lips with angry, insistent caresses. His breath tastes sharp and sour with something else, a black, roiling undercurrent of death.

She comes out of the dream as if rising from the drowning depths of the sea, with a harsh gasp, followed by a deep, throaty cough.

_Enough fluid in your lungs to drown a small child._

Or two.

Her eyes burn with unshed tears. She blinks over corneas of sandpaper and looks down at her latest accomplishment with a mixture of pity and fatigue.

The blood pooling under his head has long since dried, a dirty rust on the otherwise gleaming floor. She's not sure what time it is, or even what day.

She'd expected to be found and caught. A nosy neighbor might have heard the gunshot and called the police, but as the days wear on, as the silence from the outside world deepens, she realizes the likelihood of any surviving neighbors is slim.

_What's one little murder among billions?_

The infection took hold shortly before she left the lab. She unknowingly grasped both her life and death in a single moment, the press of her hand against his sleeve, the cool vial, a gift-curse hidden in her palm.

She is one of the lucky ones, though luck is relative. She's been actively testing composites on herself since their research began, and it appears the soup of strains she's shoved into her veins over the course of the last two years is slowing its progress. She may get a week, where others get the same number of days.

But she doesn't wish for life. If she were a stronger person, she'd do what Kent intended for himself, but she's never been strong, only cunning. A chameleon, willing to be whatever she needed to be to survive.

Tonight she blends into the shadows. She can almost feel herself disappearing, flesh dissolving into empty space, but she can't succumb. Not yet.

There's the boy to think about. She tries to picture him, this child who holds what's left of her faith, though they've never met. He'd be thirteen, maybe fourteen, with his father's hair and his mother's eyes.

_Just like them._

She shoves aside the thought, ruthless in her grief.

_No time for that…Barbara._

Instead, she thinks about the vaccine, reaches into her pocket to comfort herself with its minuscule presence, a compulsive gesture born of grim determination.

She's protected the secrets of powerful men all her life. She'd tried to tear down the darkness from the inside, to undermine the greatest conspiracy known to mankind, but she'd failed. She'd built herself back up from the ruins of a carefully crafted lie. She has a family, a legacy to protect, a future to hope for.

_Had_, she thinks bitterly, aware of the distinction now more than ever.

It had been different this time, no longer working at the behest of a greater power, her quest was finally her own.

And Michael's.

_But he was just another powerful man._

Her mind betrays her, going back to the memory of her daughters' faces, how quiet they'd looked in their last hour. How her younger daughter had lifted herself from slumber with mussed hair and sleep lines on one tender cheek, unaware of her mother's intended intrusion.

"Mommy?"

"Shh, sweetie. Shh, go to sleep."

And she had, laid her head on the pillow, innocent and trusting until the final, bittersweet end.

That they should never have to face the same fate as their mother was a blessing, not a curse.

_That's what you tell yourself._

She weeps now, the tears falling onto her unfeeling cheeks, reduced to her essence, a shell of the cold soul she could never escape.

#

APRIL 1, 2015

10:13 P.M.

He finds her at last, stepping carefully into the soft moonlight that filters through the window. She watches from the shrouded corner as he stumbles upon Kent's body, a grimace of disgust on his otherwise handsome face. He looks just as she remembers, save for the gray at his temples.

"Shit," he hisses under his breath.

"Agent Mulder."

Her words are rough, the sounds slow and foreign in her mouth as he wheels around.

"Who's there?"

"A friend," she croaks. The vaccines haven't helped as much as she'd hoped. She closes her eyes, fighting the desire to curl into a ball, to press her burning forehead to the cool wood floor.

_Your work. You must tell him. Before..._

His breathing is rapid and thready as he searches for her in the dark. "Show yourself."

She complies, easing into the light until he's barely able to make out the contours of her face. "How do you know my name?"

"Just call me a friend. An old friend."

#

The woman moves forward, a slow shuffle, until her face is no longer masked by the long light. There's something familiar about her, but he can't place it. Dark hair, deep brown eyes, full lips. It's the eyes that give him pause.

He shakes his head. "Was he your friend, too?" he spits, glancing uneasily at the gaping hole in Michael Kent's skull.

Her voice is low and husky, a walking 900 number if it weren't for the cough. "How do you know I didn't find him like that, Agent Mulder?"

He licks his lips. "See, that's the other thing: I don't work for the Bureau. I think you've got the wrong guy."

She coughs again. "Call it force of habit, Mr. Mulder. I don't have much time."

He glances down, sees the glint of a handgun, swallows.

"You killed him," he says, nodding toward the man on the floor. "Why?"

"For his own good. And yours."

"I bet he'd argue otherwise if he could," he breathes, scanning the room for a weapon, once again coming up empty.

"I'm not here to kill you—"

"Then how about you put that gun away and tell me what you want."

She ignores this, but leaves the gun pointed at the floor. "Your son must live, Mr. Mulder."

"What the hell do you know about my son?"

"He's sick. He's infected."

"Yeah? Everyone's sick."

"You're not. Neither is your partner."

Mulder's lips draw back in a frustrated snarl. "If you know so much about me, why won't you tell me who you are?"

She blinks, long and slow. "Think about it for a moment. It will...come...to you."

The eyes, there's something about the eyes, and the way the word "come" rolls off her tongue, sultry and smooth like chocolate. There's a hollow look he remembers from the distant past, furtive glances, and perhaps something more...

He draws back, glimpsing a faint, butter smile cross her lips at the whisper of her given name.

"Marita?"

"It's Barbara now."

He shakes his head in disbelief. "You look—"

"It's amazing what a well-placed scalpel can do," she ducks her head, suddenly self-conscious. "The pain was nothing compared to the hell they put me through."

_They._

"Jesus," he murmurs, still taking her in. "They said you'd been killed. You disappeared—"

"I had no choice. They would have killed me."

He swallows. "But I didn't testify. I tried to protect you, Krycek said—" but he stops short of confessing his visions, confusion on her face at the mention of the dead man.

"I'd outlived my usefulness," she continues quietly, observing him. Her face has changed, but her eyes have the same hollow, piercing quality, as though she could unwrap the skin from his body with a single look.

"You pity me," she states, matter-of-factly, and he doesn't respond, because it's true. He'd gone to great lengths in his search for the truth, but he hadn't had to change his name, his face.

Of the two of them, he'd been the lucky one, hard as that was to believe.

"But that's...not...why I'm here," she coughs again, harder this time, and it takes a moment for her to regain her breath. She reaches into her pocket, a thin white hand disappearing into the black folds of her coat, and he jerks back instinctively, but what she holds in her fist is concealed.

"You...saved my life once. Consider the debt...repaid."

She reaches out a pale-fingered hand, indicating for him to take the object, but he hesitates.

"What is it?"

"The cure," she whispers. "The vaccine. Your son must survive, Mr. Mulder. They're coming."

"Who? Who's coming?"

She barks a laugh, a harsh and horrible sound. "You know who. You've met them. Your son is our only hope."

"Spare me the Obi-Wan Kenobi bullshit, Marita," he spits, noting how she winces at the sound of her given name, a guilty surge of pleasure at this small leverage. She holds a gun, and he holds the truth about her past. "Tell me what's happening. The virus—what is it?"

"A human concoction of an inhuman form."

He blinks, brow creased. "You recreated it?"

"'Know thine enemy,' Mr. Mulder. Without the virus, we couldn't create an effective vaccine."

"And did you? Create a vaccine?"

"Yes."

Mulder swallows his hope. "How can you be sure it works?"

"'Cloaked human trials show substantial improvements in respiratory rates, heart rate, and blood pressure. Results indicate the vaccine is a success, further testing will need to be done to confirm,'" she murmurs, quoting directly from the blood-spattered reports laid across Kent's desk.

"So is this it, huh?" he whispers drily, cold sweat trickling down his back, dampening his t-shirt.

She gives a quick and pained shake of her head. "There was an accident at the lab. It…accelerated the inevitable."

He bites his lip, nostrils flaring, biting back his frustration. "I don't follow."

"This is the first stage. There can be no resistance if there's no one alive to resist."

"But you said it yourself—I'm not sick. There must be others. Survivors." He realizes as he says it that he hasn't wanted to believe until now that there would be no one left, that he'd taken the burden of hope on his shoulders without questioning it.

She looks at him, her eyes dark and sickly. "There are. Unlucky bastards, but they're out there. The living will become slaves. Drones. Test subjects. Food."

He's shaking his head. "Why should I believe you?"

"If you want your son to live, you don't have a choice."

He sets his jaw, glancing again at the dead man. She's right; he doesn't trust her, but he has nothing else.

He reaches out, taking the object; it's a vial, an ounce of amber liquid. It conjures images of a cold wasteland, a vast ship under ice, his partner's face behind clouded glass. Once again he holds the future in his hands, and suddenly he's tired, as though the tiny glass vial weighs tons instead of mere grams.

There was a time when this might have thrilled him, he might have welcomed it; the key to humanity's future, the promise of a deep and profound knowledge, the ability to unlock some great universal puzzle. But now, he simply wants for this to be a terrible dream. For his son to be well, for their most pressing concern to be a school suspension, for his partner to be safe, for the possibility of a future.

She senses his resistance, his hesitation, but her strength is fading. "Agent…Mr. Mulder. You have no reason to trust me. But you have to believe that this…this is larger than our idle human conspiracies could have imagined. This goes deeper than we ever…could have known," she whispers, swaying on her feet.

She jerks an arm out, finds the edge of a bookshelf and steadies herself. Something about the movement triggers a memory within him; her eyes blackened from the tests, her skin cold and cracked at the lips.

"Why aren't you immune?"

"Who knows why they choose who they do, Mr. Mulder? Different strains...mutations of the old form...it doesn't matter now. I'm already dead."

She looks at him darkly, then closes her eyes.

"I suffered at their hands. I was given the chance to take it back...all the lies in which I'd been complicit. We were close," she whispers, staring weakly at Kent's body. "But they won, in the end. They always do. Until now."

Her eyes burn into his as she stumbles forward, causing Mulder to jump, torn between helping her and running. "You—your son—can stop this. He can save what's left. But he must survive."

"What do you mean, save what's left?"

"They've known about him since before he was born. They've watched him."

"They're trying to _kill_ him—"

"They will try, and they will fail."

"Who told you this? How do you know?" He has so many questions, but she's rendered unable to answer. She pitches forward, kneeling on the floor, wracked with retching spasms.

"How—"

"Go," she rasps, but still, he hesitates. His mind says to run, but his heart is too kind. For all her backhanded help, she doesn't deserve this fate.

"You're sick—"

"Go!" she snarls again, and he can see the spray of blood on her lips. "You don't…have much…time."

_I'm not the one who's out of time._

He palms the vial, stopping at the door to cast one last glance at his former informant, but she's on hands and knees, gagging and coughing, her blood mingling with Kent's on the tarnished wood floor.

_Can't help her now, Fox. Go._

He makes it to the sidewalk, a pristine strip of damp green sod, before he hears the gunshot. The sound rings in his ears long after he's climbed into the car and driven away, shaken, the vial still clutched in his palm.


	23. Chapter 23

APRIL 1, 2015

2:30 A.M.

"It was a storage area," Eileen explains as she unlocks the door, revealing a small room that's more a closet than an exam space. No windows, just the one entrance.

_Which means there's only one exit, too_, Scully thinks, pushing aside a momentary flutter of claustrophobia.

"Now they use it for patient overflow, sometimes training. We can use the table over there to block off the door." She gestures to an unused exam table, an ancient model; heavy, no wheels; a perfect barricade.

They've moved Isaac to one of the smaller, portable cots. Scully hasn't left his side since she first arrived at the hospital, and now she grips his hand, fearing this small, vacant room will become an unmarked grave.

They've stocked the corner cabinet with supplies—there's more Tamiflu, syringes, a portable crash cart—though Scully knows none of it will be enough to save Isaac if Mulder returns empty handed.

Eileen helps Scully shift the equipment around until there's just enough space to maneuver Isaac's bed inside, and the two women manage to wrest the heavy exam table in front of the door, adding a metal filing cabinet on top for good measure.

"I don't know if this will hold," Scully murmurs. "Hopefully we won't have to find out." As she says it, she realizes it's a faint hope at best.

_They'll find us_, she thinks with a shudder. _They'll find all of us eventually. Pick us off, one by one, until there's nothing left..._

_Stop it, Dana. It's not over yet._

Eileen surveys the limited space with her hands on her hips, and Scully senses the woman's determination beneath her shifting eyes.

"You should really let me take a look at that now," she murmurs, and it takes Scully a moment to realize she's referring not to Isaac, but to the wound on her chin. "The last thing you need is an infection."

Scully is about to protest, but the nurse is already gathering swabs, ointment, sutures. She leans on the exam table, suddenly exhausted. All she can think about is Isaac.

_And the bodies in the morgue. And Mulder…_

She's tried him twice, but his phone no longer rings through, and she wonders, not for the first time in her life, if he's left her for good.

She winces but doesn't pull away as the woman dabs at the stinging cuts with clean gauze and water, examines the bruises along her neck.

"He did a number on you," she says finally, sitting back.

"I did a number on myself," Scully murmurs, flinching at the memory of the sound her jaw made as it hit her desk. "And it's not a 'him'…it's an 'it'."

The distinction seems important now. The more they think of Ybarra as a man, the harder it will be to kill him if it comes to that.

_When it comes to that, Dana._

Eileen raises an eyebrow. "Well, whatever 'it' is, you're damn lucky," she says, gesturing to the marks around Scully's throat. "How the hell did you get away?"

Scully swallows, coughs lightly, her voice raw from her earlier attack. "I have a background in law enforcement…and I was damn lucky," she agrees, allowing herself the luxury of a faint smile.

"Law enforcement, huh? You a cop?"

"FBI."

The nurse whistles through her teeth. "Ahh, no wonder…all the secrecy."

"I'm just a doctor now," Scully mutters, but her words hold no conviction. The look on Eileen's face suggests she isn't buying it, either.

Silence follows, and Scully takes the opportunity to change the subject. "You've done a good job…here. With him. Thank you for that."

Eileen looks surprised, but nods slowly. "Your partner asked me to look after him. I couldn't say no."

Scully ducks her head, thinking of her missing half, how his smile had melted the walls of ice she'd built around herself—even if it had taken years. "Mulder has that effect."

"No, I mean…I have a son, too. He's…he'll be six next week." She swallows, and Scully feels a shift in the air, a slow unraveling of the woman's hard-earned truth. She's quiet, although envy visits her, an unwelcome but familiar guest.

_I never knew Isaac when he was six._

"It's been me and him since he was a baby. His father…he was never in the picture. I made it through nursing school with help from my mom, but she had a stroke," she whispers. "I was lucky enough to get this job out of school, but with no one home to watch him, I thought…well, that's that. Might as well send in the assistance application. But then my neighbor, Mrs. Callanan, she's retired…she offered to take him. You can imagine what a relief that was," she sighs, a soft laugh bubbling up. "He can be so…he's a handful. Always getting into things. You know what it's like."

Scully smiles a little, but it's hollow. Her heart sinks, and she looks back to Isaac, watching the rise and fall of his chest. Would knowing her son at six have given her the insight to weather this?

_Would it have changed anything?_

"I always felt bad about having to leave him at home, you know? But it was the only way…and if I'm being honest, I love it here," she murmurs her confession. "I love my son, but I love the work. It's hard, but…it's what I do."

The woman is rambling now, offering her life story in more words than she's spoken since Scully arrived, but Scully herself can't escape the cloud of her own grief to ask more than a simple question.

"Where is he now?"

The woman's arms are folded across her chest, and Scully watches as she picks at the skin along one ragged fingernail, recognizing the same hollowed-out look on the woman's face.

"Home," she says finally, and it takes a moment for the full meaning of the word to register.

_Home. Oh._

There's no room in Scully's heart for more grief, but here it is, gripping at her without mercy.

"His name was Thomas."

"I…I'm sorry."

The nurse is looking at Isaac with sad but dry eyes. "Keep him close, Dr. Scully. Protect him."

Her throat constricts, unsure if she's hurting more for this young woman or herself.

_I couldn't do that before,_ Scully thinks, helpless, treading water in a sea of quiet sorrow. _How the hell am I supposed to do it now?_

"It's uhh…it's just Dana," she murmurs, the first thing that comes to mind. If they're going to die in this tiny room, they might as well be on a first-name basis. "You can call me Dana."

Isaac twitches lightly in his bed, and Scully is instantly alert, but there's no further movement. A spasm, an electrical impulse, nothing more. There's no more coughing, though she knows the virus ravages his body in silence. She can hear the telltale wheeze of fluid in his lungs. The medications they're pumping through him have all the effect of bailing a sinking ocean liner with a plastic pail—an apt metaphor for their current situation.

_Eventually, we're all going to drown._

_#_

APRIL 2, 2015

4:21 A.M.

Eileen and Scully take turns recording Isaac's vitals. The work helps Scully to gather her bearings, the hard facts a small comfort amidst an expanse of unknowns.

They have water from the exam room's sink, but no food, save for a few packets of saltines. Scully isn't sure she could eat the bland, pasty crackers even if she wanted to.

The other woman is withdrawn, stoic, with a carved-out look about her features that probably mirrors Scully's own stunned expression.

_All the survivors will look like that_, Scully thinks, wondering how many of them are left.

She paces the tiny room, stretching, willing her phone to ring. She calculates and re-calculates the distance between Baltimore and their remote stretch of Virginia countryside, unable to account for what he might have found upon reaching his destination.

_He should be back by now._

Their son's complexion is beginning to worry her. His lips are blue-gray and his eyes have gone the color of coal.

"What is it about him, Dana?" Eileen asks, startling her out of her thoughts.

She blinks, distracted. "About who?"

"Isaac. You wouldn't tell me before. What is this…this thing? Why is it after you?"

"I said I can't—"

"I know what you said. I just thought, if it had any bearing on Isaac's care…"

Scully's jaw aches, she realizes she's gritting her teeth. "While I appreciate your concern, his care is not your problem. I'm his…his…"

_Mother. I'm his mother._

Eileen is staring at her expectantly as Scully opens her mouth to speak, but she can't say it out loud. The label is a lie she doesn't deserve.

Eileen shifts, uncomfortable in the silence. "Does it have something to do with the virus?"

Scully tips her head back to stare at the ceiling, her gaze tracing the line of a faint water stain on the tile. "I don't know," she concedes with a sigh. "But Isaac is…different. I don't think I understood just how different until now."

Eileen frowns, considering this, rubbing at her shoulder with hesitant fingers. "Would you…could you look at something for me?"

Scully watches as the other woman pulls up her sleeve, revealing the handprint, the shape of Isaac's fingers a red kiss across her clavicle.

"He was having a fit...a bad dream. I got a...a shock, I think."

She doesn't need to examine the skin to understand, doesn't need to close the distance between them to see what's happened, and her stomach sinks.

_He burned her. Jesus._

"Hey, it's not like I'm not going to sue. If we're lucky, all the ambulance chasers are dead by now," Eileen smirks. "It's just...if I can help..." she glances at Isaac, then back to Scully. "I'd like to help, is all."

Scully blinks, thinking of the shape of the burn on the woman's skin, the uncontrollable fire that will consume them all. She looks away. "You can't."

"I don't under—"

"It's not safe," she says.

Eileen snorts. "Have you looked around lately?"

Scully shakes her head, still looking at Isaac. "If…when Mulder gets back, you should go…somewhere remote. Stay away from the victims," she insists.

"But we could help people, together, we're both trained—"

"No!" Scully says, voice booming in the tiny room, forcing herself to make eye contact. "The best thing you can do is get as far away from the city as possible. Find others, but stay away from us."

"OK, I...OK. Fine. Sorry I asked," she says, visibly stung, shifting in place. "Can I at least ask what you're going to do?"

Scully swallows hard, closing her eyes against a future she can't divine. "What we always do. We'll run."

"And what if your partner finds a cure? What happens then?"

"Even if he does," she murmurs, feeling the weight of the dead on her conscience, "he's already too late."

#

APRIL 2, 2015

6:55 A.M.

She's propped in a cramped corner between the wall and Isaac's bed, having drifted off with her cheek pressed to the cold metal rail. The noise wakes her slowly, teasing at the edge of consciousness.

_"Sculleeee..."_

At first she thinks it might be the beginnings of a dream, but it comes again, and again, a familiar voice calling her name, pulling her slowly away from slumber.

"Scully!"

Her eyes fly open. _Mulder!_

Eileen is awake now, too, blinking owlishly in the dim light. "What is it?"

"Help me," Scully says, scrambling to her feet, using all her strength to shove the heavy metal cabinet before turning to the exam table in front of it. "Mulder's back…we need to…open this…door."

"Are you sure—" Then she hears it too, and a spark of recognition lights her eyes.

Scully continues wrenching on the exam table, and Eileen joins in, until they've given the door enough room to let Scully's arm slip through. "Mulder! We're in here!"

"Scully! Don't move, I'm coming for you!"

She waits, heart lightening with each second. They've watched Isaac's condition deteriorate, his fever raging against the invasion. At some point during their confinement, the telltale yellow-purple stain spread, grew darker.

She'd conducted the exam with cautious fingers, unable to forget the corpses, their blackened abdomens taut and rippling. She'd had to stifle a sob when the bruise once again revealed itself beneath his hospital gown, grateful Eileen was not awake to watch as she slid to her knees, pressing her forehead to Isaac's arm, washing it with tears.

Hours of waiting and watching the mark grow more vicious, with the mounting fear that her partner was too late.

_But he's back, oh, thank God—_

A hand shoots roughly through the gap between the door and the wall, grabbing and clawing for purchase, narrowly missing her coat. She can see the faint imprint of what looks like a tire tread across the forearm. Scully reels back just in time to dodge the faceless attacker once more, realizing her grave mistake.

The arm belongs not to Mulder, but to Ybarra.

_It tricked me_, she realizes, dread gripping her lungs, forcing the air out. _It tricked us, it used Mulder's voice..._

"Come…out," the voice growls from the other side of the door Scully is now frantically trying to shut, throwing herself against it, but their attacker is too strong.

"Help," she moans, a strangled cry to the confused nurse.

"What the…but you said—"

"It's…not him!" Scully gasps. "We…need…to…"

Eileen pales, but she throws her weight against the door until the thing on the other side lets out a painful screech. Its hand appears to shimmer a glistening black, tendrils of shadow snaking out from the fingers like smoke.

_Stupid!_ Scully thinks, her hair flung wildly around her face. _Stupid, stupid, Dana!_

His arm withdraws, only to be followed by a strong _thud_ as the figure on the other side connects with the door.

"Can't…hold it!" Scully pants, pushing against brute force as Eileen tries to wrestle the exam table back into place.

"Move!" Eileen gives the table a final shove, leaving them all of two inches' clearance.

_Not enough room to get out. Fuck…_

The arm is back, a scrabbling black shadow against the frame. Scully struggles with the cabinet, and together they manage to wedge the door shut as the creature withdraws once more, howling his inhuman rage into the empty chamber of the hospital corridor.

"What the fuck was that thing?"

"We need to get out," Scully gasps, muscles trembling from the effort. She's studying the vent at the top of the wall. "Where does that lead?"

"How should I know?" Eileen retorts, wide-eyed.

Scully ignores her, dragging a chair over to the vent. She's just tall enough to reach it, and the grate wiggles out.

_Thank God it's not screwed in._

The opening is barely large enough, but Isaac will fit.

"It's an air duct! We can hide," she whispers, mind racing. The hall outside has gone quiet, but that doesn't make her feel better.

It's coming back. We're trapped, and it's going to get in. It's going to kill him.

The nurse is shaking her head. "No. No, what about the kid? He can't…he's barely alive as it is…"

"We don't have a choice," Scully hisses. "Help me get him up there. Quick!"

The woman blanches, but does as Scully asks, disconnecting the boy's IV, lifting Isaac's limp frame from the bed. "This is fucking crazy," she moans, handing the boy to Scully, still standing on the chair. "Watch his head there—"

"Got it, I got it."

Scully and the nurse manage to feed Isaac's body into the vent, grunting at his unconscious bulk. He doesn't stir, and they break only for a moment to check his pulse, his breathing. "He's still with us," Scully murmurs through gritted teeth, a roaring pain in her chest, her ribs. "Let's keep it that way."

She turns back to Eileen, realizing she doesn't have the strength to pull herself up. Her encounter with their attacker coupled with heaving Isaac's body into the vent has left her muscles useless, wrung out. She can barely lift her arm without swooning.

_Probably tore something_, she thinks dully, one hand gripping the edge of the vent above her, the other wrapped against the space just under her left breast, pressing hard where the stitches used to be.

"Can you climb up?" she gasps to the nurse, trying to conceal her hurt.

"I think so…"

"I need a boost. Thread your fingers—yeah, like that," she says, slipping off her heels, using the woman's hands as a step, giving her just enough height to put the vent at neck level.

"Put the grate back on behind you," she grimaces looking over her shoulder at the door with growing worry. "Hurry! We don't have much—"

She's interrupted by a loud thud against the wall, a growl at the door. The heavy exam table shudders across the floor on rubber feet. Another hit and he'll be inside.

_Not yet not yet…_

Her heart leaps into her throat. "Going!" She kicks off with a strangled cry, launching herself upward and into the dark, narrow cavity. Her head swims with the pain of each fiber of stretched muscle and tendon, but she's still conscious, focused as she is on Isaac's still form ahead.

_breathe, breathe, go, move move_

She grasps the edge of seam, pulling herself along as her ribs scream in protest. Her feet have barely cleared the opening when there comes a loud crash, a scream from behind

"No! Get away from—"

A louder thud, a strangled cry.

_Damnit!_

Another thud, this time as Eileen's body is thrown. Scully backs out of the vent in time to see the nurse sliding down the far wall, unconscious.

She doesn't think, doesn't realize she's cried out until she feels her vocal chords straining, a desperate effort to get the monster's attention. "Hey!"

The director's likeness turns toward her, and she feels its distant, muted terror, a deadly magnetic pull. She's unable to tear her eyes away from Ybarra's flickering, wavering shadow.

_It's not him it's not him it's not human_

"Where is the boy?" he hisses, and Scully finds she can't form a coherent response in the face of infinite darkness.

_It doesn't know where Isaac is_, she realizes dully, a fleeting moment of clarity. She scrambles down from the chair, keeping her back to the wall, sliding along the perimeter and away from the vent in an effort to hold his attention.

"Hey!" Her voice sounds thin, weak to her ears. A quick glance at Eileen tells her she's hurt—badly. There's blood streaking the wall where her head hit and slid down.

"Where is the boy, Agent Scully?"

She swallows, fear gripping her heart in ice. "You can't have him," she means to sound strong, but her voice is little more a reedy croak.

"You cannot fight the future, Agent Scully. The child must die."

"No!" There's a gnawing sensation at the base of her skull, a thick curtain of silence as he consumes the last of her will to resist.

"Where is the boy? The boy, Agent Scully, you will tell me-"

"Scully!"

_No please no_

Mulder's voice is an anchor thrown from the darkness, and she feels her knees buckle. Ybarra's impression is too cruel, too real, and she can't reconcile the monster before her with her partner's familiar tenor.

"Scully!"

_Isaac, oh Isaac, I'm so sorry…_

She sinks back against the wall, tears stinging her cheeks, salting the gash on her chin. Ybarra's form flickers rapidly from shadow to light, oily trails mapping his face. His body sways, and her eyes follow, unable to look away.

_Please…please don't let it find him_

The vent is wide open, the grate discarded on the floor alongside Eileen's body. One glance inside the shaft and Ybarra will see Isaac's body.

"Scully!"

She doesn't make the connection until Mulder himself is standing at the threshold, disheveled and frantic, but alive.

_…alive!_

She can't speak, can't move from her place against the wall to warn him, but her heart surges.

"Scully! Cover your eyes!"

There's a flash of metal in his hand, and before Ybarra can turn, Mulder drives a scalpel into the base of the other man's neck, eliciting an inhuman shriek that fills the room with a ghastly echo.

The monster snarls, acid blood dribbling over his collar, revealing a brown-green trail of dissolving flesh beneath. Scully turns her head to the wall, chest heaving with shallow gasps, feels the stinging sensation play across her lids, her cheeks. Her lungs burn with the tainted air as the body sizzles and pops behind her. She hears Mulder's labored breathing in the background.

_He's back! Alive!_

"Scully! Are you hurt?"

"No," she gasps, not daring to open her eyes, reaching out blindly, "Mulder, I...we..."

"Keep talking, I'll come to you."

Her words come out in a flood. "Isaac, he's in the vent, we were trying to get out, he was—"

"I...yeah, I see him. Keep talking, almost there."

"The nurse, Eileen, she's hurt, she's—"

She feels his hand on her shoulder, warm and solid, relief as he pulls her close, the engine roar of his breath against her ear. "Jesus, Scully, I thought I was too late."

Ybarra's body is already melding with the floor, burning through the tiles and into the concrete underneath.

"She's hurt, Mulder, we have to—"

"Isaac first." His voice is rough, rumbling against her cheek. She feels him pull away, watching through sore, slitted eyes as he climbs onto the chair, favoring his knee.

"Got him." He drags Isaac's body gracelessly back through the vent's opening by his feet, before laying him over his shoulder. "He's not moving," he says, worry lines across his brow.

Scully grasps at the boy's neck, feeling the tender flesh for signs of life. A thrumming under her fingertips, a gentle, almost imperceptible rise. Dark brown lashes fan over pale cheeks and she feels her gut twist. "He's breathing! Lay him down, over there."

"Is he—"

"He's been unconscious."

"How long?"

"About sixteen hours. His vitals are stable, but weak. The fever came back. His lungs are full of fluid, and he has…he has this."

She pulls back Isaac's gown to reveal the ugly purple bruise, and Mulder draws back with worry.

"What is it?"

"It looks like the beginning stages of a massive invasion of the body's abdominal cavity." Her words are slow, clipped, as she rewraps the wound. "It's using the body to reproduce. The infected victims become hosts."

"The oil," he says thickly, and her nod is almost imperceptible.

"We got him into the vent just in time," she murmurs. "It broke in, it was going to kill him. It used your voice, Mulder." Her chin drops, her voice catches in a hitch. "I thought it was you, I didn't even consider…I opened the door."

"It could have been, Scully. It came through the waiting room, there was glass everywhere…"

"It was stupid. I never should have—"

"No…no. You didn't do this. You kept him safe."

Eileen is not so fortunate. A brief exam reveals the woman's face is burned, eyes raw from exposure to the poisonous blood, features frozen in an acidic slumber.

"I had to, Scully. I couldn't take the chance."

"I know," she murmurs, kneeling, reaching for the woman's wrist, knowing she won't find a pulse. "It was her idea to hide here. God, we wouldn't even be alive right now if she hadn't…" but she trails off, unable to say it.

_Bought us time._

Mulder ducks his head, fidgeting with something at his side. The silence that passes between them is heavy with sacrificial blood.

"What happened out there, Mulder?" She straightens, facing him, eyes shining like emeralds in the faint green light. He doesn't know how to answer, and fear creeps across her bone white skin. "Did you find it? The cure?"

"I have this," he says, voice like sandstone as he palms the vial.

Her eyes widen. "You found him? Kent?"

"No. But I did find an old friend."

"I don't understand."

He turns the glass in his fingers, watching as it reflects the dim amber light. "SRSG," he says quietly.

Understanding dawns on her face. "No…you can't be serious. Mulder, she disappeared…after your trial. They were going to kill her."

"And they did," he says, bitter anger beneath a ragged exterior. "She's dead…the infection..."

Scully gapes, but the pain on his face is too fresh. She pauses, choosing her words. "Marita? She gave you this…why?"

"She said Isaac needs to live. If there's any hope for our survival, it's in him."

Scully reaches out, taking the vial from his weathered hands, holding it away as though it might sting. "How could she know? Mulder, she worked with the Cancer Man. We don't know what kind of influence he had on this...this...thing...and how did she even know about Isaac? It doesn't make sense."

He shakes his head. "She wouldn't tell me. I just…I was hoping you could run some tests on it," he says, shifting his weight, favoring his bad knee. "You're right. I don't have good reason to trust her."

"Mulder, we don't have time," she says, hating the pleading, desperate note in her voice. "Even if there were enough of a sample here to test, I don't know what I'm looking for."

"Yeah," he whispers, hand at the back of his neck, sucking in a shaky breath. He turns to Isaac, reaching out to touch the back of his hand, the puncture where his IV used to be. "That's what I was afraid of."

"It could kill him," she murmurs, feeling the weight of the glass chamber pressed into the line of her palm.

His voice breaks, and her heart breaks with it. "He's going to die, Scully."

She remembers during her cancer, how he'd had walked into her hospital room with a vial not unlike this one, a vial given of untrustworthy hands, and how there had been no question in her mind. She would accept the treatment, no matter how far-fetched or unbelievable, because it was the only option left.

Now she understands how Mulder must have felt in that desperate moment. She'll blame herself forever if what's contained within makes Isaac worse. She'll blame herself if he dies because they choose to do nothing.

_We can never win._

"A syringe," she says, the words coming out as a soft croak. "I need a syringe. In the cabinet, over there."

Mulder narrows his eyes in a silent question, but doesn't argue. He notices the clench of her jaw, the slight tremble in her chin, but her hands are steady as she uses the needle to draw the liquid from the vial.

"Wait," he cries, startling her before the tip can puncture Isaac's paper-white skin, but he doesn't know what he's asking her to wait for, so he steps back.

The injection takes seconds. They both flinch a little as she depresses the plunger in the boy's upper arm, a heavy pause when the deed is done, and all that's left to do is wait.


	24. Chapter 24

When his ravaged body can take no more, the silence rolls over him like an endless white fog, a soothing cocoon of nothing. Her voice comes from everywhere, falling on his shoulders like warm cotton.

_Isaac._

_Mom?_

_Oh, Isaac. It's you._

_Mom…I…_

_It's OK, baby. _

_What happened to me?_

_You were sick, baby._

_Did I…am I dead?_

_No. But they're coming. You can't stay._

_Why? Who?_

_We don't have time. You have work to do._

_But I don't want to…Mom, please—_

_Go back, Isaac. Let them help you. You need them._

_But I don't understand—_

_Shhh, baby. You won't, not yet. But you should go._

_Mom? Mom!_

He reaches out, but her memory crumbles like brittle in his hands. A scream cuts through the fog as his mind shatters, and he doesn't recognize the timbre of his own voice. Something jerks him backward, claws of agony pull him down, down, and the world goes from white to gray to a deep, oily black.

He's pulled taut in every direction as his eyes open for the first time. It's bright, cold, and there's the hiss of a strange tongue. Everything burns, the stimulation too much, and he groans a mixture of blood and bile onto the floor in a rough coughing spasm that seems to go on forever.

"Breathe! Breathe, Isaac, you need to—"

The words sound foreign and strange, trapped between worlds. He wants to go back to the white quiet, but his mind is a throbbing hive of angry bees, every nerve on fire.

"Isaac, can you hear me?"

"Jesus, it's killing him."

"No…no, I think it's working."

His eyes roll in their sockets, unfocused, and the black syrup bubbles up again. He dry heaves, coughing and choking until his stomach is one massive cramp, until he's finally able to draw a shuddering breath.

"That's it, Isaac, breathe, just breathe…"

The hand is cool, rubbing long strokes along his back until he slips into unconsciousness.

#

APRIL 4, 2015

1:45 A.M.

When he wakes, it's blissfully dark. His stomach aches, his arms feel weak. The hissing in his head is still there, but distant now, lacking its former all-consuming insistence.

"Isaac."

He turns his head toward the sound, the vague recollection of another voice, the same warmth—_Mom? No, it's the doc._ _But…she's at the hospital. Where am I?_

"Isaac, can you hear me? Can you talk?"

"Mmm," is all he can manage. His throat aches, his eyes are tender and raw, and when the memories begin to surface, he finds himself swept up in fresh sorrow.

"You're going to be OK, Isaac," Scully whispers, and he feels her squeeze his hand. "You've been sick."

He turns his head, because nothing about this is OK.

"Rest," she says, as if it's as easy as closing his eyes to make the monsters disappear.

But they do close, eventually. The hum in his head comes in waves, lilting and flowing, and he drifts on its patterns, the intersections foreign but eerily familiar…

_Like speech._

His eyes fly open in the darkness, except it's not complete. Moonlight has crept in, bathing the room in milky blue light. She's sitting in the chair next to his bed, watching him.

_She's not the only one watching tonight._

"They're here," he croaks, the hollow edge in his own voice only scares him more.

"Who's here, Isaac?" She leans forward, features lined with fatigue.

"I hear them."

"What do they say?" Mulder's voice, tired but strong, drifts from a shadowed corner.

"Can't understand," the boy whispers. "It's…them."

Scully's head hangs, he can sense her resistance, already creeping between them. "Isaac…"

"They're coming for us," he says, challenging her, willing himself to find the strength to convey his fear. The light is harsh, all-knowing, there are too many possibilities within. He winces at the flood through the window, his vision hazy with the buzzing drone in his head.

"Isaac, you need—"

"No! You need to listen to me," he gasps, struggling to sit up. "They're coming, they're going to find us—"

"I believe you," she says, surprising him, stilling him with a hand to his shoulder. "I do. But you're too weak, Isaac—"

"You need to rest," Mulder says, leaning forward, his face catching the light. Isaac can read their worry, sense their fear, but he isn't the one they should be worried about.

"Let us take care of you, OK?" Scully says, her fingers drifting across Isaac's forehead in a careful caress.

He's tired, so tired, but only when Scully draws the shades against the moon does Isaac allow himself to relax against the pillow, to close his eyes, to sleep.

#

APRIL 4, 2015

9:27 A.M.

"He's weak, but his lungs are clear," Scully murmurs, hand to the boy's forehead. "Temperature's down. I think we can go home tonight."

"We can't stay, Scully," Mulder whispers. "We have to get away from the city. You said it yourself, once these things hatch, we're outnumbered."

"I know." Her eyes are dull with exhaustion. They've been watching over Isaac for hours, neither willing to leave his side. "Just for the night. Tomorrow—"

Mulder nods, biting his thumb. "Hide out somewhere remote, at least 'til he's stronger."

It's hard to imagine a place more remote than their little farmhouse, with its sprawling fields and ambling tree line. There was a time when it had been strange to her, when she missed her tidy apartment in city. The sunny kitchen windows, the claw foot tub…

_The nursery._

She remembers how unsettled she'd felt upon signing the mortgage—their first permanent decision after months of impermanence—and how she turned the key in the lock and walked into the dusty, drafty old place with resignation rather than excitement. The quiet of the country was unnerving, and she struggled to sleep without the hum of traffic behind her dreams.

It was on one of these sleepless nights when she'd wrapped herself in a robe and walked outside in a fit of homesickness and longing.

William weighed heavy on her mind then; he would have been a toddler, and his absence was felt acutely in every facet of their new home. From the precarious basement steps to the cast iron potbelly stove that sat unguarded at the edge of the living room, every unpadded corner, every unlocked cabinet was a reminder of what was missing.

_It's like he never even existed._

Mulder found her on the front porch, a sky full of stars reflected in her tears. The steps creaked as he sat down beside her.

"Not a bad view, huh? Can't see the night like this, living in the city," he'd remarked, squinting up at the sky, marveling at its razor-sharp beauty, the contrast of her pale skin glowing in the inky darkness.

She'd shaken her head, unable to speak through her sorrow, silence spiraling around them like a funnel cloud.

"You want to go back?" he murmured finally, asking the unspoken question that had hung between them for months. He'd wanted to beg her to stay, but couldn't. It wasn't a matter of self-respect—he given up his pride with Scully years ago. The last time he'd pleaded, bared his soul to her in that grimy, overheated hallway, she'd been taken and damn near killed.

He can't beg, because her duty to him is too precious to risk. She'd honor it in a heartbeat, and he'd have no one to blame but himself.

"We can't go back," she'd said, knowing it was more than state lines and the threat of a death sentence that bound them to this tiny property in the middle of nowhere.

"But you could," he swallowed, speaking his blessing to the ground, "if you wanted."

She'd cleared her throat and looked at her partner, studying him as she'd studied the stars, sadness and love painting a mixed smile on her lips.

"I could…but then I'd miss the view."

It took months, but one night she'd walked through the door to find a fire in the stove and her partner with his long legs over the arm of the couch. He'd looked up from his book with a wry smile, they'd made dinner, and later, love. Nothing unusual, just an ordinary, quiet evening, but something had changed.

At some point along the way, the house with the creaky front porch and the drafty windows had become a home.

Now, looking at Isaac's face, she realizes they've reached another end, the future sprawled in front of them, perilous and uncertain. She brushes an errant hair from the boy's brow, then bows her head at his side.

#

APRIL 4, 2015

7:20 P.M.

"I don't think anyone will miss these."

Scully picks over the hospital pharmacy's shelves, selecting antibiotics and painkillers as though shopping for produce.

Mulder hangs back at the door with Isaac, fighting the urge to check the boy's pulse a fourth time, settles for placing a hand on his shoulder instead. Isaac hasn't spoken since he woke up, rendered mute with fear or exhaustion, it's impossible to say.

_They're coming._

Isaac leans against the frame, barely upright. His eyes are hollow pools reflecting the flat gray walls. The bruise on his stomach has faded to a thick yellow, the color of pus, and Mulder watches him rub at the tender skin under his wrinkled t-shirt. The mark only serves to remind Mulder that they're living on borrowed time.

_We should have left hours ago. God knows when those things will come out to play._

"C'mon, Doc," Mulders sighs, glancing uneasily over his shoulder at the empty corridor. There's a swollen body crumpled in the corner at the end of the hall—nurse, doctor, or patient, it's too far away to tell.

_Doesn't matter now._

The sight reminds him of the waiting room, the corpses he'd blindly stepped over in haste, and a shiver caresses his spine. There's the smell of stale blood in the air. He could swear he sees the body twitch, the abdomen black and undulating.

"C'mon," he repeats, this time with more urgency, "let's get out of here."

The sky is an inky purple cloak by the time they pack themselves into Scully's beat-up Toyota. They drive through solemn, empty streets, passing dark houses that loom, eventually giving way to rolling fields. Mulder glances in the rear view mirror to find Isaac staring out the window.

"They're all dead, aren't they?" the boy croaks, a rasping sound that startles Scully from a light sleep.

Mulder glances over at his partner, but her tired eyes reflect his disquiet. Neither know what to say. When the boy speaks again, his voice is low and broken.

"I can't…I can't hear them anymore."

Mulder opens his mouth to reassure him, but closes it after a moment's thought, realizing he has no false comfort to give.

"I dreamt it," Isaac continues quietly, "this is how it begins."

Their eyes meet in the mirror. "How what begins, Isaac?"

A measured pause, and the boy returns his gaze to the outside, his last words barely a whisper. "The end."

#

The house is dark when they arrive. Mulder takes a flashlight to the basement to check the breaker, but all three seem to understand this is a formality. Scully is already searching the cupboards, withdrawing candles and flashlights.

"Nothing thrown," he says, confirming her fears as he clomps up the stairs. "Power's out."

_It's going to stay that way_, she thinks, but her partner has already moved on.

"Clothes, non-perishables, tools…we'll pack tonight, leave first thing in the morning."

Scully turns to their son, shivering in spite of the blanket draped over his shoulders. "Let's get you to bed."

He lets Scully tuck him into his bed without protest.

"Doc?"

"Mmm?" She's distracted, packing clothes into a duffel bag, back turned at his dresser. Her hand pauses over a sweater, wondering how long they'll be gone, if they'll ever come back. She's full of nervous energy, unable to forget his earlier words, paranoia heightened in the eery half-darkness.

_I can't hear them anymore._

His voice is faint in the tiny room. "Is it true?"

She turns, setting aside the clothes with careful movements. "Is what true?"

"You're both thinking it. That you saved me because…because I'm supposed to do something. Something important."

She swallows, failing to dislodge the painful lump in the back of her throat. "We saved you because you're our son, Isaac."

"But… but you think I'm supposed to save us," he whispers, a distinct tremor in his voice followed by the impossible question. "How?"

He's sitting up now, frightened and pale, still so pale.

"How?" he demands, an accusation wrapped in a sob. "I don't…how am I supposed to save us? Tell me!" His fingers clench and unclench, gripping the quilt, twisting it. She can still hear the faint whistle of fluid in his lungs.

"Isaac…I…" she whispers, sinking to the bed, trying and failing to still his frantic hands with her own.

"I don't understand! Why me? I don't want to…I can't—"

Sorrow and fear transform him, his face so young, so vulnerable she can't stand it. She reaches out, pulling him into her arms, wrapping them around his slight frame.

He shudders against her, and she presses her nose to the crown of his head, taking in the scent of him, sweet and primal. Mother and son separated by time, connected by blood.

_Mine_, she thinks as her hands rub his back, trying to soothe him the way she used to when he was small. _The world can't have you, they can't have you, because you're mine._

"I…can't…" he hiccups. "They're…here…can't get them…out…"

"Shh, I know, I know…"

She rocks him, a subconscious motion, a reflex born of sleepless nights and a deep, unwavering connection to this being to whom her body gave life.

_He's just a boy._

He quiets, and as the tears dry he pulls away, embarrassed. He sinks back against the pillows, coughing weakly, and she reaches for the glass of water on his nightstand, grateful for the distraction.

"You've been through a lot," she says as he sips. "Do you remember getting sick?"

"Not really," he says. "I was cold...after Alice...and then Mulder picked me up, I think. I dreamed…" he trails off, leaving the thought unfinished.

Her empathy is a ragged nerve. Nine minutes or nine years, she knows what it's like to miss time, to feel the emptiness between moments as negative space.

_I wonder if it's possible to make a complete person from all our missing pieces._

"Isaac—"

"I'm sorry," he blurts out, a watery confession directed at his lap.

She blinks, brow furrowed, not understanding. "Isaac, none of this is your fault."

"No, I mean…for what I said. Before."

Scully feels her throat tighten, her breath catch. The argument that had seemed so critical at the time has been rendered inconsequential, but to think her last words to him were hurtful makes her cheeks flush with shame.

"Isaac…you don't have anything to apologize for."

He's silent.

She presses her lips together, tries to keep her voice from shaking. "I should have listened to you. I should have stood up for you. I…I'm not very good at this."

"You're alright," he sniffs, but he can't look her in the eye. His fingers toy with the frayed edge of the blanket.

"And you're a terrible liar," she returns, smiling a little. "You get that from me."

His face turns a faint shade of crimson, the same color as the quilt in his hands.

"Isaac…we were without you for so long. I wanted more than anything to have you back…but I don't think I understood what that meant for us, or for you."

She continues, traversing this uncharted territory, afraid to lose momentum. Her body remembers how his hair felt pressed against her cheek, soft as down.

"There are things we haven't told you…things about your past…things I still can't explain…"

"You said no secrets," he whispers.

She nods, a soft huff against her own unwavering dedication to proof before belief. "I didn't tell you because I didn't want to believe it…because I didn't think we'd see you again. But now…" she sighs, looking out the window. The field outside is barren and gray, a reflection of a desolate future.

He follows her gaze, finishing her thought with a hollow whisper. "Things are different."

She turns back to him, staring intently at the silhouette of his nose, his lashes, his brooding eyes, wishing she could lift the burden from his shoulders.

"Isaac," she reaches out to cover his hands with hers, "you've shown us so many things. Astounding, unbelievable things. You're not…you're not what I expected. I always dreamed we'd find you someday, but I didn't think it would be like this."

He frowns at her pause, expecting disappointment, but her voice is soft and full of love.

"I wouldn't change a thing," she continues, "and I'm…I'm proud of you. No matter what, I hope you know that."

He doesn't respond, but his fingers tighten imperceptibly, holding on a little bit longer than before.

"I know you're scared," she murmurs, "but whatever happens…I'm here."

He ducks his head in silent assent, and she has to look away. There is too much loss and love to be contained within these stark, unfinished walls.

"Get some rest," she chokes out, "we'll leave in the morning."

He settles back against the pillows, reluctant, but too weak to argue. "Where will we go?"

Her eyes drift back to the landscape outside, to the cold, faceless earth. "I don't know. But we'll be together."

#

She retreats on light feet, hoping to have her moment in private, but someone is waiting. A shadow leans across her path, and she has a flashback of Ybarra's black tendril arm scraping and scrabbling at the wall, and suddenly her ribs can't take the incessant flailing of her heart against them.

"Jesus, Mulder!" she says, hand pressed to her chest, the words coming out in a frightened hiss, "You scared me."

"Sorry. Thought I'd check on him, but then I…you two were talking…I didn't wanna crash the party," he finishes carefully, searching her face.

"Ahh," she sighs, ducking her head, the softest catch in her breath, "you heard."

He nods, cocks a knowing eyebrow, eyes shining. "This is the part where I get to say 'I told you so', right?"

"Never," she whispers, trying to be coy, but there's no force behind it. She's too tired to play this game. Instead, she lets him pull her close, forehead pressed to the hollow of his breastbone.

"What do we tell him, Mulder?" she whispers, words muffled by the fabric of his sweater, his steady beating heart beneath. She'd asked the same question of him months ago, and once again he has the answer.

He tucks a finger under her chin, tilting her head to his, and the love reflected in his face makes her throat constrict all over again.

"It's like you said, Scully. We'll be together."


	25. Chapter 25

They're twisted in a tangle of sheets, having stopped long enough to check on Isaac one last time before falling into bed together without more than a word between them. There are too many missed kisses, touches, so much left to remember.

His hands are hot and rough, hers are nimble, and their lovemaking is familiar and bittersweet in the flickering candlelight.

It's been too long, too much has happened in between. He reminds himself to slow down, to savor this, but his mouth runs desperate against her throat, her lips, her breasts.

He remembers her with his fingertips, memorizing every tactile curve, every murmured, breathless encouragement. He traces the bullet-shaped scar at her navel with his tongue, dipping down to the three soft, shimmering ridges along the base of her abdomen, the last vestiges of the child she once carried in her womb.

He embeds himself in her the way she's embedded in him, like a million tiny splinters left under his skin. Her hand unfurls against the headboard, bracing herself as she arches to meet him again and again, and he kisses the porcelain curve of her arm, admires the delicate tips of her naked fingers. They're splayed, etching a damp print into the bed, every whorl and crevice a tattoo on the faded wood, and he thinks he has never seen anything so erotic.

Even as the world crumbles around them, when she gasps and cries his name into the darkness, for a moment there is nothing but blessed light.

#

She dozes on his shoulder, feeling every second of the last several days. There's an unnamed ache deep within her soul, and a more recognizable ache in her body.

When she closes her eyes, she can almost make herself believe this was a terrible dream. The world as they know it is gone, but nothing has changed in this bed, in this room, in this place they call home. Nothing, at least, except them.

_Except Isaac._

As if to remind her, a hollow moan echoes from the downstairs bedroom, followed by a cough. Scully is immediately transported back to the hospital, to Isaac's bedside, holding his frail, dying hand as he retches up the virus that sought to kill him. She moves to sit up, instinct telling her to go to him, but Mulder is already reaching for his clothes.

"I'll check on him," he murmurs against her ear, planting a soft kiss on the lobe before turning away. The sudden absence of his warmth against her skin leaves her chilled. By the time her breath settles, Mulder is back.

"Gave him some water. He's fine," he reassures her, though his eyes carry the same vacant fear as her own. He wipes at his face before easing himself into bed and wrapping his arms around her, nestling his chin on the top of her head. "Kid's going to need a bigger therapy fund, Scully."

She snorts in agreement, deciding not to mention the fact that therapists are in short supply. The quiet settles around them until his voice rumbles in her ear.

"Do you think he remembers?"

"Remembers what?"

"His first year. With you."

"It's not likely…he was too young. But I've shared memories with him."

"You have?" he asks, drawing back with curiosity.

She nods, distant. "When he first came to us, when he had a nightmare and couldn't sleep, I'd sit with him."

"Oh." He pauses, absorbing this, his breath stirring the hair at her temples. She nestles into him, lips pressed against a spot just above his breastbone.

"What are you thinking?" she yawns softly into his skin.

"Mm. I was thinking…I wish I could share those memories."

He lets this linger, unsure if he wants her memories, or wants memories to share; it's a nice thought, but an impossibility both ways.

Moments pass, and he nudges her again. "Scully?"

"Mmm."

"Do you believe it?"

Her voice is drowsy. "Believe what?"

"That he's meant to save the world."

She shifts against him, tensing, a ripple of unrest passing between them. "Does it matter now?"

"It does to me."

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. "I believe…I believe in him," she whispers.

"That's not what I asked," he says, his lips grazing the soft, rounded curve of one bare, milky white shoulder.

She turns away, pulls the blanket up to her chin, a weak defense. "Mulder—"

He raises himself up on one elbow, soft and questioning. "Why is it so hard for you to accept? With everything you've seen—"

"Because I've seen_ them_," she says, tears threatening, "I've seen what will happen to those people, all those…those poor people. I've seen what he's up against, Mulder, and I can't let him…he's just a _boy_, for God's sake. I can't lose him again."

He pulls her as close as he possibly can without crushing her, until their skin melds in all the places their bodies meet, hips and hands a ground wire from the stars to the earth. "We're not going to lose him, Scully."

"But we are," she whispers, voice raw. "We already have. Because if I believe it…if it's true…then he was never ours to begin with."

#

APRIL 5, 2015

Words were exhausted hours ago, but neither can sleep. Now dawn is creeping over the horizon, and Scully thinks the sun has never looked so bloody.

It's not long before Mulder unwinds himself from around her to sit at the edge of the bed, which creaks and protests with the movement.

"Mulder? What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he sighs, intent on something outside her line of vision. "Just a sec."

He limps to the closet, shuffling around at the back of the top shelf, where they keep the extra blankets. She frowns. "We packed the last quilt, Mulder, I put them in the car last night."

He doesn't respond, pulling a box from the top shelf, brushing the dust off as he brings it back to the bed.

_Ahh. That_, she thinks, and her breath hitches at the hard memories. She winces as he opens the cover, setting it down, and half the contents slide out onto the bed.

_Damnit. This is not the time._

"Mulder?" she sighs, sitting up, her hand coming to rest on one of the many pieces of ephemera now spread before her; a photograph, one of the few taken prior to their leave from the FBI.

Mulder is still rifling through the papers, so she leans forward and brings the photo closer, studying it while she waits for him to explain why he's chosen this moment to dig into their arduous history.

They stand together outside a building somewhere in D.C. She can't remember the case, but she's holding a file, focused on something within. Mulder is beside her, close enough that his hands are out of sight, probably resting at her elbow, maybe her back. If she closes her eyes, she can imagine the gentle pressure of his fingertips against her body, how the slightest touch through layers of clothing sparked against her skin, making her feel warm and cherished in his company.

It takes her breath, this simple picture of their time together, long before they became They. It had taken years for her to see it, to acknowledge their relationship for what it was, and even now it creeps up on her, catches her off guard. Tears prick at her eyes and she wipes them away.

One good thing in a box of so many rotten ones, but she'd forgotten how good even the worst times could be.

What strikes her, what she'd never noticed before, is the way he's looking at her—as though the world around them had already ended and she was the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

She blinks back more tears and glances up to find him looking at her with the same liquid expression. She's drawn to his eyes, their hazel depth, the way his Adam's apple bobs at his throat as he swallows, and the ache of her affection goes straight to her core.

She thinks of hours ago, the way he'd kissed her and moved inside her, feeling as though she'd recovered some missing piece of herself, the way it always feels when she's with him.

She thinks of their son, sleeping fitfully in his bed, and has to wipe away fresh tears. Mulder doesn't seem to notice, intent as he is on a soft black shape in his hands. His voice is raw when he finally speaks.

"So…I bought these a while ago. And…I never found the right time to ask you…now I guess it doesn't mean much in light of the current situation but I thought…well, you know," he fumbles.

She blinks, unable to follow him to the recesses of his mind. "Ask me what?"

No response; he looks to the floor, to the ceiling, lets out a deep, shaky breath. The contents of the bag fall out into one hand, something small and twinkling dimly in the candlelight. He's holding whatever it is as if hypnotized, staring at his palm, brow furrowed, before she finally reaches over to gently tug at his fingers, pulling him closer for a better look.

The bands, gold rings, don't register for what they are, and she stares at them, puzzled. There are two resting in the crease of his palm, one small and one large. He's looking at her expectantly, biting his lip the way he does when he's nervous.

"Mulder?" her voice lilts upward, half question, half warning.

He swallows, giving her a hesitant, lopsided smile. "It's not exactly a proposal. More like…an acknowledgement. I'd get down on one knee, but I might not be able to get back up," he says, the joke betraying his lingering nerves.

The tears are back, making hot tracks down her cheeks, but she doesn't speak. The answer is in her eyes, in the way her jaw trembles, the way she reaches out, knowing exactly where to find him. There is no spoken, "Yes," no, "I do," because it's become apparent, much to Mulder's relief, that the answer has been waiting for him all along.

_She'll say yes._

The ring slips onto her finger despite his clumsy hands, a perfect fit, and he is surprised at how quickly and confidently she returns the favor. The band is warm, and it fits along the tender skin as though it has always been there.

Then she's kissing him, pulling him down, down, into the nest of blankets. The kiss lasts forever, and when she finally pulls away, breathless, he murmurs the first thing that comes to mind against her willing, open mouth.

"Til the end of the world?"

Her eyes shine, reminded of the first kiss they shared so many years ago, and he sees himself reflected there, his permanent home. He tucks his chin into the crook of her neck, breathing her in, and her response resonates in his soul.

"Til the end of the world," she agrees, sighing against the nape of his neck. "The end of the world, and after."

#

FIN

* * *

_AN: I hope it was as fun to read as it was for me to write. Thank you for all the feedback, I'm loving it! The third book is in progress; give me six months and we'll wrap this thing up. :)_


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